Video game developers are unionizing too w/James Russwurm

foreign I'm with uscw 401 out of Edmonton I'm representing a group of video game testers at unionized last year in April hell yeah well James thank you so much for sitting down and chatting with us at the real News Network we are of course here in Montreal at the 30th Constitutional Convention of the Canadian labor Congress and you know the real News is here to talk

to as many folks as we can learn as much as we can about what workers like yourself are going through struggles you're involved in the state of the labor movement in Canada and ultimately how we can support one another better across International lines right and I'm really really excited to connect with you and talk about your guys's campaign because you're the first you know video game

kind of like Union uh to form in Canada right that's correct yes man yeah so I want to talk all about that um and I want people to know where things kind of stand with that campaign and what they can do to support y'all but before we get there let's take a step back because I love to kind of talk to folks about how they got

looks like absolutely so to answer your first question of sort of how I got into it I actually worked in a different capacity I worked in hospitality and tourism uh prior to covid um during covid I was laid off as there were so many other of my you know fellow employees uh so I took it at the time I always wanted to get into video games

you know development that way so I went back to school I went to the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology and while I was there I applied to work with keyword Studios and they got back to me and said hey are you interested in you know taking this job I said yeah that's great what's the pay well it's minimum wage and I went okay yeah I'll still

take it you know was that was that a shock to hear I was hoping for a little bit more than that I wasn't expecting them to go so uh just so everyone knows uh Alberta minimum wage is 15 an hour so that is the bare minimum that they could pay us so but it's sort of a passion industry you want to get that foot in the

door so I said yeah I'll take the job started working on it and it was great so I started there and yeah it's what that looks like it's not just like you're just coming in every day just sitting down playing a video game and testing it so our uh is that what most people think you do is just yeah sit on a bean bag and just

play Sonic I don't even have a bean bag but yeah um so we were actually working from home because it was the pandemic and and everybody was sort of you know working uh remotely uh then we had a meeting I would say in April of uh last year that sort of changed things but the actual day-to-day work is a lot of coming in someone will tell

you hey go to this level check out these things write a report on it send it back to us you know we're going to write report files and issues we're going to get that back so I did that for about a year uh and then I was promoted up into a next level where I am now a quality analyst and that kind of throws me off

some moves because they don't really know what a quality analyst is and what that is is so instead of being the one that that writes the tests or sorry that runs the test uh you create the test so you're creating the test for the workers to go do they are you know testing what you need to do and then you relay that information back to the

developers and they make changes and stuff so kind of like a middleman between the testers and the developers but it's a it's a quite a technical job it requires a lot of technical writing skills and a lot of know-how in in sort of broader video games and how they work so we wouldn't consider ourselves unskilled laborers because you've pretty much need a post-secondary degree to even

be considered for these types of positions and we have people from all different types so you know backgrounds and degrees everything from drama to you know technical design so it we really represent quite a broad selection of individuals all working against video game testers so uh in I believe it was February of last year uh we got uh sort of called into a meeting uh with

our our Managers from keyword Studios that said okay uh starting next month you're all going back to the office full time you're just that's just what's going to be happening and we had been working for the last three years from home there had been no issues regarding metrics or performance or anything like that so it kind of took us as a bit of surprise that there

wouldn't be any ledency there would be no hybrid it was just nope back in the office five days a week um we're what's called embedded services so we work directly in the offices of the studio which is currently BioWare uh their employees were not required to come in every single day they were offered fully remote hybrid you know whatever they wanted so we sort of kind

of scratched our heads a little bit at that and went well why are we being forced back into the office and then uh for those of you who don't know we're in Edmonton and Downtown parking in Edmonton where our office is is about 250 a month when you're only making minimum wage over the course of a year it's almost 10 percent of your wage that you're

just paying to parking and gas and car insurance Etc so plus the additional 45 minutes on your day there and back and that's if you're driving if you're taking public transit Edmonton Public transit's pretty bad so it you know you're going to be at an even further disadvantage and you're going to spend more time on the public transit you're going to spend money on Transit passes

maybe it's over 100 a month for a transit pass in Edmonton so we were all kind of going can we afford to keep working here you know if I've got to go back to the office I'm already cutting it close I'm saving costs because I'm at home you know I don't have to commute I can make my own food at home I don't have to like

go out for lunch or you know after work socials and all of these other things and so we decided okay we're gonna have a conversation and uh I approached one of uh our you know members and said hey you know how does this affect you like if we have to go back to the office you know next month five days a week what is your life

looking like and you know they were telling me well like you know don't have a car so I'm going to be spending over two hours a day on public transit just going to and from work and we're just like you know there's got to be a better way so I said how about unionizing you know are you interested and they went what you know once again

like what like what does that do like what is that what does that mean and then that's sort of where I started so I had previous experience with unions in the sense that my dad works for the power Workers Union in Ontario for like 30 years and one of those Industries you worked 30 years you retire you got a great pension you know so I kind

of understood the power of unions at the time and it's been a topic in the video game industry for quite some time where people are saying hey you know you guys should unionize because a lot of people don't know that it's quite an exploitative sector because we work in something that is a passion industry like I said earlier I'm willing to accept minimum wage for the

experience and the opportunity and the exposure to get into that role and we just sort of said you know hey we got to do something there was about there were some questions on who would be in the bargaining unit and who couldn't be so what I started to do was just sort of reach out to our members uh just discreetly so uh we're all remote we're

not in the office so I couldn't just you know grab somebody by the arm after work and say hey let's go get a beer I got something to talk to you about so I had to be a little bit more cryptic than that being um I'm not sure if you're familiar with the application uh Discord yeah so we had sort of a out of work social

Discord that had a lot of our members on it yeah and so I just started reaching out to them directly on that a little cryptic at first being like hey could I talk to you about something you know I never never you up it kind of felt like that at times right we were just like um it's I don't want to say it's not serious but

like you know when you got a minute can we talk and that's sort of how I started reaching out to our members sort of discreetly and building out a base so uh there was about 20 22 of us uh and there was some questions on who could be in the Unix we did have supervisors and managers and things like that uh present but we ended up

getting about 17 Union card signs um and it was great because it was electronic uh with covid one of the benefits that came out with it was you didn't have to go and like sign a union card anymore and go all over the city and track people down it was like hey here's a link and fill it out and then what we did was we built

a community within the discords yeah we made like a server and then it was like you signed a union card you get an invite so you and then once you're in then you can chat to everybody else who's already signed a union card and talk about workplace issues and talk about you know what's bothering you and sort of like building this this group up from the

grounds and we uh we reach out to everybody everybody got a chance to say yes or no and then by the end we had about 17 cards signed so in uh much to some of our members enjoyment we uh submitted our application on April 40th I'm sorry April 20th uh 4 20. uh yeah on brand yeah so they uh we we submitted that and then we

sort of you know took off from there and that's sort of how I got my start and how we got the whole ball rolling with the unionization wow I mean that's incredible because like those basic questions that you reached out and asked your co-workers like because like you said like going back to the office from work from home to transitioning to five days a week in

the office like that wasn't just like a oh I don't get to wear sweatpants anymore which is how like it's talked about in the mainstream media it's like no this is an immediate chunk of my take-home pay that just is gone and and like I don't know like just I really want to emphasize for people watching and listening to this that just taking that step to

turn to your left turn to your right ask your co-workers what is this going to mean for you like that is organizing that is that is where it starts and look where it grew from there right and and I wanted to just kind of hover on the technical detail for a second absolutely because you know I talked to so many workers in the United States who

are similarly trying to you know unionize their shops whether they're Starbucks workers uh Amazon workers uh graduates students non-profit workers so on and so forth um and as you probably know the U.S not a very labor-friendly Place unfortunate so like when I talk to people outside of the U.S about the like you know Rube Goldberg system of rules and hurdles just to get to like a

union election most people's questions like how does anyone get a union in the United States and the sad fact is most don't um but I say all that to say that for us the standard process is to yeah get uh people to sign Union cards if you get above 30 percent of the eligible bargaining unit members in your shop to sign cards that triggers a National

Labor Relations Board elections uh but it's a long drawn out process you get a date for an election that's like usually a month or months away in that time that's when the boss can turn on the screws and hold captive audience meetings the election process is like not easy to navigate so there there's a lot of put in people's way I wanted to ask if it's

like if it's the same or like yeah yeah um we so I from Alberta uh we have a conservative government right now that just recently been their last sort of like term repealed sort of the majority card rule like if you had majority of the workers sign a card you're boom you're just unionized yeah so they got away with that they they just threw that out

the last time they got elected so we still had to have that like month process where we had pretty well everybody on the team had signed the card and we had a few that were just like you know I'm a little uncomfortable assigning the card although yes when the vote comes around but like I don't want to be involved in like any of this organizing exists

it all goes bad and you know we respected those people and you know we knew like we don't want to like even pressure you're really lean on you right like we respect your decision we gave everybody the option to say yes or no so we went in with a majority I think we had like almost like 70 of the team had signed cards at that point

so we knew we were in a good spot for for going through the vote but we still had our employer try to claim people who didn't even work with us in the province to sort of like dilute that pool right yeah because if they think oh maybe they just hit the minimum threshold for cards we'll throw some more people in there oh now you don't have

them many people anymore too bad right um it was it turned out to be a little bit funny because when we still passed the review they're like yeah they got more than enough cards oh and suddenly those people are no longer part of that bargaining unit like we don't want you to represent those people you know kind of stuff so we're like okay well we have

the cards so what happens next we had some Executives flying to Edmonton never before have we seen anybody from any other regional office or anything that I come into Edmonton they looked like a hotel conference room and said hey we're gonna be here uh for two days come by tell us what your problems are we'd love to help you solve them I don't think anybody win

and uh I think that sends a pretty clear message to them as well and so after after that I think I kind of died off of it we didn't really get any captive audience meetings I think uh that like a lot of people get it also helps that we're remote right we're all in our different homes so they can't come into working Ambush us and be

like hey we're all having a meeting in the office right now be send us a zoom link and then yeah whatever just minimize it good something else while they talk about anti-union stuff or whatever but I never had that happen um and then eventually we got to the vote and uh the vote was well it was also virtual so they had our we had signed our

mail-in ballots so we had all received them in our home or at our home mail them back in they'll go to back to the labor board then the labor board counts them and I was watching it on Zoom because there was me and another member from UFCW there and then of course a representative their lawyer from from keyword Studios and she opened them all and went

through them all and I'm like oh is she just checking to see like that they're all there and then she's gonna do a count and once she was done with them all and she was like unanimous it's a unanimous yes and I just was like yes you you like the slow motion like pump yeah that's a good message right so I was super proud of our

team there to just come together unanimously because we didn't want to be in a position where we had a portion of people who didn't feel like this Union was for them or it wasn't the right fit so just the team sending that signal to so us as the organizers and to the union at UFCW and to our employer right that's a resounding message hey we're ready

to go we're ready to fight on this and then that's sort of when after that vote we started getting into contract negotiations which you know we're still in today uh we're working on our first contract and it's slow going but we are talking about a lot of things that don't exist in other Union contracts we're talking about work from home um that is something that we

want enshrined in our contract that's sort of like hey if our workers don't have a you know demonstratable need to be at the office they should not be required to be there and if you do require them to be there then you gotta like give them some sort of stipend a monthly allowance or something like that for parking for for fuel costs you know etc etc

so um that that was one of the big sort of factors that we wanted to do and funny enough we kind of already got it because after the submission to the labor union they have what's called a freeze right like he can't he can't change working conditions on the workers anymore which means can't send us back to the office so that would be changing our working

condition so our members have actually been able to continue working from home for the last year and you know in some cases save people about 3 000 blocks a year in parking Fuel and things like that so it's it's been nice that we've been able to sort of already enact some of those changes that we were going for was one of the big ones being work

from home we kind of already have it right now and then when we get it and tried in our contract then we'll it'll all be uh official and the other thing is obviously wages because we get paid minimum wage If you're sort of like a starter just game tester which is about 15 bucks an hour the average price I think about a one bedroom in Edmonton

right now is twelve hundred dollars a month so we have people who are you know I've spent almost 50 of their paycheck just sort of go to rent right we've got members who can't move out of their parents place because they can't afford a place on their own so we're really trying to get those wages up to at least at least like a living wage for

Edmonton which is about I believe right now is 22.50 but yeah I don't know the way inflation's going maybe that changed since like last week so yeah it's uh it's it's just our way of battling back against these high prices and these inflationary environment right it's all we can do well like and I mean that's like without a doubt the biggest like Common Thread that I'm

hearing from workers across Industries not just here in Canada but in the U.S the United Kingdom France I mean like all over the world we are in the midst of a really intense cost of living crisis right absolutely even just the the phrasing of that always creeps me out um but like I mean you know it's it's like it's been this really big equalizing factor that

I feel has brought folks in from industries that may have in the past seen themselves as uh separate from your standard blue collar worker right I mean you're seeing more non-profit workers folks in Tech right not just um you all in Edmonton but down in the states we've had you know uh really critical uh Union drives and labor actions in Tech uh at Google Apple Microsoft

Act division right so like something's really happening here and what I'm hearing from more and more folks is uh cost of living is a big one yep right it's like regardless of the industry that we're in there are of course some exceptions but by and large people are noticing the same Trend that we're working longer we're working harder and yet it is like taking more and

more to make ends meet with rent with groceries uh gas and electric bills so on and so forth so like it really does feel like we're all taking in water and and people are turning more to unions Collective action worker mobilization right to fight for what working people deserve and I think that's really really exciting to see and I kind of wanted to like ask in

that vein you know if if that was a difficult part of the process for you was to like get folks to see themselves as you know workers who should unionize in the first place right or see did you all see yourselves as part of this Groundswell that we're seeing in Tech or even Beyond with the increase in unionizations the strikes um yeah was that was that

a little bit actually like we I mean we the way we work at look at it is you know we're all workers right like if you if you go to work for your money and you got to work you're a worker right it doesn't matter if you if you work in video games it doesn't matter if you're appointment right like we we work for our dinner

we all do so there's no sense in us being like oh well you know we're above this or you know we're we don't need Collective action because we're treated so well because reality is we're not uh the uh video games industry is is highly exploitative in across uh not even just for testers even developers uh I don't know if you've heard the phrase crunch before um

but what that essentially is is when you're working on a project and you're getting near the end and you're going okay we have this release date that we can't really move because we've shipping our products to vendors and you know they're going to put it on their shelves and it's going to be ready to go but there's all this work left so we're just gonna do

like 80 hour weeks until that happens and there's been projects that our members have worked on where that has lasted for six months like like just unrelenting over time no breaks like people sleeping under their desks like is not uncommon in the sphere right and the industry's trying to change that culture a lot especially from the studio levels they're trying to get away from that better

planning delaying games you know that kind of stuff but the reality is for a long time and still even to this day that is what's happening right these people are being exploited because they love what they do and it's it's really hard to watch and that was you know part of the reason that I I really wanted to get a feel for how the team was

feeling because coming into this when I was starting uh I didn't really have any experience in video games but I the people on my team had been around the block and they had seen a lot and they could sort of see it a bit into the future of where we could be heading and wanting to protect ourselves against that right so either like we're in our

contracts overtime is a really big thing that we're talking about right because generally that's been the the safety net for the studios is oh if you can't make our deadlines we'll just you know grind our Workforce until it's done and it's it's not healthy people burn out you know it's it's terrible for mental health and uh we that's sort of what we want to protect ourselves

from is those sort of exploitative measures and so yeah we absolutely feel like we're in line with all the other labor because that's what happens to like almost everybody Right grocery store workers are getting you know hoes just pandemic with their hero pay then that was taken away like we were lucky that we weren't out on the front lines uh during covid uh but you know

we 100 support everybody who was and we want to make sure that we can make all labor better for everybody regardless of what sector you're in well like the hero pay is is the perfect example it's the one that I always go back to because it makes the case to any worker out there even if you are in an industry where you feel like you got

it better you than you know a farm worker or a service worker or something like that a boss's promise is temporary a Union contract is in writing right because we saw that in the states like Amazon right got all this publicity in the early days of the pandemic when it offered hero pay not Hazard pay because if you call it Hazard pay then you have to

keep paying as long as the hazard persists but when you call it hero pay it just seems like something that you're giving out of the benevolence of your of your own heart right right a very calculated Little Ships there so like yeah but it's um but it does really make the case that that um if we have like an inflation crisis or you know uh we're

in the kind of like circumstances that we're in now a lot of those promises the working conditions the pay um you know they can go away they can be changed out on a whim absolutely and pass down unilaterally and if workers don't have a union a collective voice on the job it's like what do we what do we do what do we say in that regard

so it really is and everyone's interest to have that organization in their workplace even if you you like your job yeah right which is like another thing that that I've heard from y'all is like um we don't want to leave and just uh like find something else like there is a lot we've invested in this but we should be paid a living freaking way yeah right

like and and we just you want to be able to pay your bills at the end of the day and that's any worker I feel that works you know a full-time normal job should be able to do that in our members can't right now right because of the pay and it's I think it was I don't want to say easy because it's organizing is not easy

it can be difficult at times uh but it's necessary and if you if you feel that way about your workplace if you're saying you know you look for the people out there they're being exploited or you feel like you're being exploited you know and just talking to your to your fellow workers and saying you know hey this decision that just happened how does that affect you

how does that make you feel right uh I never knew how far that would take me to being able to organize right and I think that that's uh really like the message that we want to put out there is yeah it's work but it's worth it because at the end of the day what we have now is more than we had even before reunions and we

don't have a contract yet we have legal protections that are protecting us from you know just them firing us all right it's a lot harder to do those types of things once you have Union recognization and then the contract comes afterwards and then whatever you can agree on and uh it's it was an easy sell for a lot of our people because there's not a lot

of guarantees in the games industry for working especially us as contractors right you may work on a title and then at the end of that title they say well we don't need a testers anymore we go lay off and you can all go on EI or whatever right and uh next time that there's a project we can you know you can apply and then maybe you

get the job right and sort of the carrot that they dangle in front of you is these Studios right they say Hey you know if you do a really good job on this you know the studio is going to want to pick you up and and hire you and there is some truth to that but the reality is say have 60 people maybe two of those

people are going with students all right and it also creates this sort of intercompetitiveness of people like trying to stand out and and and and one upmanship that we really want to get away from right because what what my conversation was to them I said well what if instead of that we could get recall legislation into our Union contract that says hey if you worked on

this project if there's another one coming up they got a hire based on Sydney market and that's something else that we're talking about with with our employer as well right because right now there is no guarantee that when you're done a project you'll ever work in games like this again right um maybe there was a manager that just didn't like it and you're just never going

to make it past the interview phase we wanted to make sure that it's fair and that you know based on how much time you put in you can come back and then you can you know continue your work which is more of a guarantee than we ever had before oh yeah well James I want to thank him for sitting down and chatting with us I want

to thank action word for letting us use their booth and I wanted to just end on a final question where do things stand now with the fight for the first contract and more importantly what can folks watching and listening to this do to stand in solidarity with y'all well uh to answer your first question sort of where we are today we're still in the midst of

negotiations actually I'm doing some virtual negotiations uh Wednesday Thursday with my employer uh and then we're we're still building out the contract but we're we're hopefully going to be done by the end of the summer is sort of our goal and we've seen movement from the management side as well as sort of a okay yeah let's get this wrapped up you know we want to finish

this because they've been at it a long time too they got to fly to Edmonton from like Ireland anytime they come to negotiate with us right so that we're we're hoping that in the next couple months we'll be able to come out and be like hey this is our contract that's what we got and and sort of be um an example for anybody else who wants

to follow afterwards and so what I can say to people who are uh maybe out there listening to this what they can do to support us pay if you work in video games find a way to reach out to us you can probably find us through a lot of ways we'd be happy to talk to you share our stories and and help them but also if

people can change the perspective a little bit on what we do is we don't uh we came up against us a lot especially when uh the story broke people say oh those video game testers you know and you sit around play games all day right remember that we're workers just like everybody else and we're just trying to get a fair deal it just like all we're

asking for is a living wage right uh and and and and share that knowledge with other people so and you know maybe you hear about another games worker who's Who's down and oh my job is is killing me say hey look at these people have you considered unionization because so far it's worked well for them and uh yeah that's that's what I'd like thank you so

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