GDC's Biggest Surprise Is A Crucial New Union
Gaming’s first industry-wide, direct-join union just dropped.
For the first time, an industry-wide gaming union has been launched to include all game workers in the United States and Canada, regardless of their job or employment status. The United Videogame Workers union was announced at this year’s Game Developers Conference, formed in partnership with the Communications Workers of America and the American Federation of Musicians. The newly formed union is seeking members at GDC and online.
The UVW-CWA, as it’s called, is a direct-join union. That means individuals can join the union themselves, rather than needing to organize a significant portion of their workplace. Members can also join regardless of their employment status, so freelancers and workers between jobs are eligible.
The United Videogame Workers union was announced at this year’s GDC in San Francisco.
“Our mission is to take back our lives, our labor, and our passion from those who treat us like replaceable cogs; to empower our fellow workers; to link up arms with the laid off, with the freelancer, with the disillusioned contractor, with the disenfranchised and the marginalized, with the workers laboring invisibly to keep this industry afloat,” UVW-CWA wrote in its mission statement. “We are going to create a game industry that works for us, one that nourishes its talent and invests in its future, rather than constantly seeking short-term profits. We are the ones that make the games, so we must be the ones that set the terms of how we work.”
A zine distributed at GDC and available online lays out the rationale for the new union. It mentions a litany of problems plaguing the games industry, many of which have been central to the formation of other unions, like the one recently created at Bethesda. The zine cites low wages relative to other industries, long and unpredictable working hours, the prevalence of sexual harassment and discrimination, and a constant threat of layoffs that’s become particularly visible over the past few years.
Persistent sexual harassment in gaming has helped fuel the unionization movement.
UVW-CWA says its first actions will include circulating a petition to address layoffs and drafting a “video game worker bill of rights” to clearly lay out the union’s goals.
The direct-join union model has some significant differences from a unionized workplace. While the barrier to entry is lower, members don’t have the same legal protections against retaliation for union activity. The UVW-CWA points out that members don’t need to inform their management that they’ve joined the union, but the organization is working to “build towards having enough power and support so that you and your peers can be public in a safe and effective way that benefits the organizing campaign, not harms it.”
The new industry-wide union will exist alongside unions at specific studios, like Bethesda.
As Emma Kinema, CODE-CWA’s senior campaign lead, writes in the zine, there’s also good reason to think beyond the current legal framework for unions. Both the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board in the United States have been targeted by the Trump administration, and companies like Whole Foods have refused to abide by successful votes by staff to unionize.
Kinema also points out that while the direct-join union may be new to gaming, it has roots stretching back nearly a century to the labor actions that built today’s strongest unions, like those in the automotive industry. As the union’s zine explains, UVW-CWA is meant to supplement, not replace, traditionally structured unions. The organization encourages workers to continue organizing their own workplaces, but notes that since such unions typically exclude freelancers and can be disrupted by layoffs, UVW-CWA can help fill the gaps. A lot of work remains, but this is an important step forward for an industry ravaged by layoffs and crunch.
