In the wake of the recent unionization efforts, such as the Writer's Guild strike, the Animation Guild is also pushing for more power in the industry.
Production houses such as Dreamworks and Pixar—once celebrated for their revolutionary in-house work and style—have increasingly outsourced their once-award-winning animation labor. — Read the rest
The post Inside the struggle to unionize the animation industry appeared first on Boing Boing.
In a vote on June 26, Microsoft employees who worked at Bethesda Game Studios voted to unionize. Microsoft acknowledged 241 union members on July 20, and the studio will now be affiliated with Communications Workers of America (CWA). According to reporting by IGN, the new union would negotiate with Microsoft for a new contract that would prevent any workplace abuses or exploitations. Bethesda Game Studios is the famed developer of several popular franchises including Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, and was Microsoft's biggest acquisition prior to their industry-shaking purchase of Activision-Blizzard-King in 2022.
The news of the studio's move to unionize is welcome, as other AAA companies have instigated mass layoffs for talented teams, with NDAs preventing them from sharing portfolios containing relevant assets. Bethesda Game Studios has also had its share of troubles with shutdowns and workplace controversies from its parent company. In May 2024, IGN reported that Microsoft shut down at least four Bethesda-owned studios and would not provide updates for games like Redfall despite retailing a DLC. The most that players could expect to receive is "the value of a purchased upgrade."
In 2018, the development of Fallout 76 involved a high "human toll" with 10-hour, 6-day workweeks and employees not given time to rest and recharge if placed on that team. Contracted QA testers, in particular, were reportedly underpaid despite several being coerced to work on weekends, and the extra pay did not compensate for the physical and emotional demands. Paid employees would monitor and time the contractors' breaks. Complaints to upper management achieved nothing and Fallout 76's buggy release led to increased pressure and even death threats from frustrated players.
A 2022 report from Kotaku condemned this crunch culture and how it encourages burnout in creative fields, leading to entitlement in upper management and lower-quality output. Several employees even reported developing chronic conditions such as tinnitus and back pain, with low morale settling among the team. No one was trying to protect those working to find the bugs and remove them; in some cases, the recommended fixes were never applied.
Another troubling workplace incident saw a Bethesda employee posting an eight-paragraph pro-life rant on Slack in 2022 following the Supreme Court's decision to strike down Roe v. Wade. This rant contributed to what some employees felt was a work environment where affected employees, including those queer or identifying as female, already felt tension and hostility rooted in sexism and ableism as they inquired about what protections they would receive regarding contraceptives and abortions. Neither ZeniMax Studios nor Microsoft offered comments when Kotaku reached out to them. The existence of an unsafe environment is often cited as a reason for low morale in the workplace.
Unionization is one method to protect game developers and employees from these sudden layoffs, crunch culture, and hostile work environments. Workplace union protections may assist those who have gaps in their portfolios owing to NDAs or whose work may never see the light of day if a game gets canceled. Most importantly, vulnerable employee positions like QA testers could receive competitive wages and appropriate allocation of hours on projects that require large amounts of input and testing.
With luck, Bethesda Game Studios will report positive changes in the workplace. Concrete improvements could help prevent a repeat of the Fallout 76 controversies as well as chronic health conditions that overworking can cause. Employees can take pride in working at the company, rather than lose the spark that made them enter gaming with a desire to create. Unionization at Bethesda Game Studios was a long time coming and may represent a continuing trend in the industry.
As of today, the The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) has called a strike of the Interactive Media Agreement - effectively, video game voice acting, motion capture work, and other roles, the full list of which can be found here. The strike comes after over 18 months of negotiations with some of gaming’s largest companies - including Activision, EA, Insomniac, Take-Two, and WB Games - over AI protections.
Yet again, some good food. Following the news earlier this week that 241 Bethesda Games Studios staffers had formed what was at the time the biggest wall-to-wall under Microsoft, The Verge reports that over 500 World Of Warcraft developers have voted to form their own union, alongside the Communication Workers of America (CWA).
As of today, the The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) has called a strike of the Interactive Media Agreement - effectively, video game voice acting, motion capture work, and other roles, the full list of which can be found here. The strike comes after over 18 months of negotiations with some of gaming’s largest companies - including Activision, EA, Insomniac, Take-Two, and WB Games - over AI protections.
Yet again, some good food. Following the news earlier this week that 241 Bethesda Games Studios staffers had formed what was at the time the biggest wall-to-wall under Microsoft, The Verge reports that over 500 World Of Warcraft developers have voted to form their own union, alongside the Communication Workers of America (CWA).
Microsoft and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) have forged a labor neutrality agreement for all ZeniMax workers. The CWA says the deal is similar to the one from 2022 covering Activision Blizzard’s workforce, which went into effect in April of this year.
“Thousands of our ZeniMax co-workers now have a free and fair path to organize together for better working conditions,” Page Branson, a Senior Quality Assurance (QA) Tester, wrote in a CWA press release.
In 2022, the Xbox maker signed a formal agreement with CWA to respect Activision Blizzard employees’ right to organize. Set to take effect 60 days after Microsoft’s acquisition closed, it didn’t become official until earlier this year. It also extends Microsoft’s early 2023 recognition of ZeniMax QA workers’ right to unionize, and it now includes every eligible employee at ZeniMax.
The CWA says the new agreement means Microsoft will take a neutral approach when employees express interest in joining the union. The workers can communicate with their peers and union reps about membership “in a way that encourages information sharing and avoids business disruptions.”
According to the CWA, workers will have access to a decision-making process that respects their privacy if they wish. In addition, it includes a dispute resolution and arbitration process in the case of any disagreements between the union and Microsoft.
“When we organized our union under a similar legal agreement the process was clear and management did not try to influence anyone’s decision and the company did not try to interfere with the voting process,” Branson wrote. “There is strength in numbers, and as our numbers grow at ZeniMax, at Microsoft, and in the video game industry, we will gain the respect we deserve and raise the standards of working conditions for everyone across the video gaming industry. When we benefit, the consumer and the company will ultimately benefit with us and help keep this industry stable for current and future workers.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-and-cwa-forge-labor-neutrality-agreement-covering-all-zenimax-workers-212643324.html?src=rss© ZeniMax Workers United - CWA / X
The recent wave of headlines about shoplifting and retail theft, accompanied by viral videos of people brazenly walking out of stores with stolen goods, has captured the attention of the media and politicians. The tough-on-crime crowd has advocated for a crackdown on shoplifters through more aggressive prosecution and harsher penalties. Others have emphasized the need for rehabilitation for offenders.
One group of progressive California lawmakers claims to have found an even better solution: banning self-checkout machines from stores in the name of fighting crime. In reality, this "anti-crime" bill is nothing more than naked protectionism for union jobs.
The proposed legislation would prohibit groceries and other retail stores from using self-checkout machines unless a host of conditions are met. These include having at least one staffed employee for every two self-checkout machines (and the employee must be exempt from any other duties), only permitting the machines to be used by shoppers with 10 items or fewer, and ensuring at least one regular cashier lane is also available at all times.
The bill's sponsor, state Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas (D–Los Angeles), calls her approach "smart" on crime instead of "hard on crime," telling The New York Times: "We have so many bills in this Legislature that are trying to increase penalties….We know that what makes our community safe is not more jail time and penalties. What makes our community safe is real enforcement, having real workers that are on the floor."
To underscore her point, Smallwood-Cuevas cites a study suggesting that retail theft is up to 16 times more likely to occur at self-checkout machines than at traditional registers, leading to an estimated $10 billion in annual losses for retailers.
A closer look at the fine print of the bill, however, reveals the true intent behind it. The legislation mandates that any store seeking to install self-checkout machines must first produce a study analyzing, among other things, the number of employees "whose duties would be affected by the workplace technology," as well as the "total amount of salaries and benefits that would be eliminated as a result of the workplace technology." The study must then be provided to employees potentially impacted by the technology (or their collective bargaining representatives) and posted "in a location accessible to employees and customers."
Were this a game of poker, this mandated study would be the tell: Smallwood-Cuevas and her fellow progressives are trying to tuck a pro–union jobs bill inside the Trojan horse of crime prevention.
Smallwood-Cuevas was a labor organizer before her legislative career, and some of the bill's biggest sponsors are labor unions. A press release on the United Food and Commercial Workers' website lauds the legislation, with the president of the local chapter complaining that "employers have increasingly implemented automated checkout to drastically cut staffing and reduce labor costs." The press release does not mention the word crime at all and only uses theft twice and shoplifting once. In contrast, jobs, staffing, and worker displacement are referenced a total of 10 times.
Efforts to limit self-checkout in other blue states provide corroborating evidence, such as a proposed anti-self-checkout ballot initiative in Oregon that labor interests tried to get on the 2020 ballot, explicitly positioned as a pro–union jobs measure.
While a pro-labor bill in California may seem utterly unremarkable, some on the right may be buying the bill's anti-crime framing. Both Fox Business and the New York Post ran articles highlighting the bill as an anti-theft measure, with little reference to the real motivations behind the legislation. Given the right's increasing embrace of labor unions, it is not hard to envision an unholy alliance of pro-labor progressives and tough-on-crime populist conservatives supporting bills around the country to eliminate self-checkout.
Supporters of the bill and numerous media outlets have cited two examples of large retail chains making their own internal decisions to reduce or remove self-checkout machines to clamp down on theft. The aforementioned statistics about self-checkout lanes leading to more shoplifting are also frequently referenced. But these points ironically cut against the need for government involvement: If self-checkout machines are really leading to massive inventory losses for stores, then retailers themselves have a direct bottom-line incentive to scrap self-checkout.
No one cares more about inventory loss than store owners, whose entire business model is predicated on customers actually paying money for their products. That is why some retailers are reevaluating the efficacy of self-checkout and experimenting with new monitoring tactics such as "smart video" cameras that can halt the self-checkout process if they notice a customer declining to scan any items.
There already is a built-in market response to theft concerns around self-checkout—more government interference is simply not needed. If lawmakers still want to ban self-checkout machines anyway, they should at least be honest about why.
The post The Real Reason for Self-Checkout Bans appeared first on Reason.com.
Better not read this post out loud to anyone—federal labor regulators might not like it.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) stretched its speech-policing powers to new highs last week when an in-house administrative judge ruled that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had violated federal labor law by expressing anti-unionization views during several televised interviews in recent years. Specifically, Judge Brian Gee dinged Jassy for suggesting that Amazon employees might be "better off" without a union and the layers of bureaucracy that come with it.
Jassy made those comments during an appearance on CNBC in 2022—during a segment in which he was discussing Amazon's response to ongoing unionization efforts at some warehouses. In the ruling, Gee highlighted similar comments that Jassy made during public forums hosted by The New York Times and Bloomberg.
The First Amendment protects Jassy's right to talk about those things and federal labor law allows employers to discuss unionization as long as they are not harassing or intimidating employees by doing so.
None of that seems to matter to the NLRB. In the ruling, Gee said Jassy had engaged in unlawful "coercive predictions about the effects of unionization" and ordered Amazon to post notices at its facilities reminding workers of their rights.
The punishment isn't really the point, however. Going after Jassy for remarks made in obviously public forums—comments that certainly were not meant to harass or intimidate current or would-be union members—is a signal that the NLRB sees virtually no limit to its powers to police executives' speech.
"Reasonable people may disagree about the line between permissible and impermissible speech" within the bounds of federal labor laws, said Edwin Egee, a vice president at the National Retail Federation, in a statement. "However, if Judge Gee's decision is left to stand, the effect would be to erase this line entirely. Employers would rightly wonder whether they can speak about unionization at all, despite their legally protected right to do so."
Gee's ruling in the Amazon case sits awkwardly alongside other recent rulings by the NLRB that gave wide leeway to employees' speech about similar topics. As the Washington Examiner noted, the NLRB in January forced Amazon to rehire an employee who had been sacked after directing an expletive-laden tirade at a fellow worker.
Meanwhile, some Google employees who were fired after protesting the company's contractual relationship with the state of Israel have filed a complaint with the NLRB asking to be reinstated. The former workers say they were unfairly terminated for engaging in speech that was "directly and explicitly connected to their terms and conditions of work," The Washington Post reported.
It's too soon to know how the NLRB will handle that case, but something has to give. It simply cannot be true that federal labor law permits employees to engage in any and all conduct without consequence, while simultaneously preventing CEOs and employers from speaking freely during media appearances and other public forums.
Federal bureaucrats don't have the authority to decide that all speech is either mandatory or forbidden—and whether they like it or not, the First Amendment applies even to the CEOs of successful businesses.
The post Labor Board Goes After Amazon CEO for Suggesting Workers Might Be 'Better Off' Without Unions appeared first on Reason.com.
A judge found Thursday that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy broke federal law when he told employees they would be less empowered if they voted to join a union, among other anti-union comments given in interviews with CNBC, Bloomberg and The New York Times in 2022. — Read the rest
The post Amazon CEO Andy Jassy broke federal law with anti-union statements appeared first on Boing Boing.
Continuing the long American tradition of wealthy corporate overlords making union-busting comments, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy went on a media blitz in 2022 to warn of the workplace-altering terrors of labor unions. (Surely, it’s an unfortunate happenstance that his urgent PSA coincided with an uptick in organizing efforts at Amazon.) Sadly for Mr. Jassy, the US still has a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and CNBC reports that the board ruled Wednesday that his anti-union comments broke federal labor laws.
Jassy popped up on CNBC in April 2022 to say that if employees voted for and joined a union, they would become less empowered and could expect things to become “much slower” and “more bureaucratic.” In an interview with Bloomberg, he added, “If you see something on the line that you think could be better for your team or you or your customers, you can’t just go to your manager and say, ‘Let’s change it.’”
He capped off his union-busting trifecta at The New York Times DealBook conference, where the CEO said that a workplace without unions isn’t “bureaucratic, it’s not slow.”
It’s the latest in Amazon’s long history of union-busting behavior.
NLRB Judge Brian Gee said Jassy violated labor laws by suggesting employees would be less empowered or “better off” without a union. However, Gee said the CEO’s other comments about worker-employer relationships changing were lawful. According to the judge, the difference is that the more aggressive quotes “went beyond merely commenting on the employee-employer relationship.”
Gee added that the comments “threatened employees that, if they selected a union, they would become less empowered and find it harder to get things done quickly.” The judge recommends that Amazon “cease and desist” from making similar comments in the future. The company is also required to post and share a note about the judge’s order with all of its US employees.
In December, Jassy’s Amazon shares were valued at $328 million, making him one of America’s wealthiest CEOs.
In a statement to CNBC, an Amazon spokesperson said the judge’s ruling “reflects poorly on the state of free speech rights today.” Because, hey, what kind of free country do we even have if a retail magnate can’t tell low-income workers scary bedtime stories about the perils of voting to empower themselves in the workplace?
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-ceos-anti-union-comments-broke-federal-laws-labor-judge-rules-171809699.html?src=rss© Amazon
Modern public-education history is littered with novel education theories that have failed so spectacularly that the terms are now used as pejoratives. For instance, when I was in elementary school in the 1960s, the "New Math" focused on teaching abstractions rather than fundamentals. You can find reams of research documenting its failure decades later, but the evidence was recognized almost immediately.
That then-new approach "ignored completely the fact that mathematics is a cumulative development and that it is practically impossible to learn the newer creations if one does not know the older ones," according to Morris Kline's 1973 "Common Core," a set of educational standards embraced by California and 39 other states in 2010. On hindsight, it also deserves a failing grade.
"Despite the theory's intuitive appeal, standards-based reform does not work very well in reality," read a 2021 Brookings Institution report. "The illusion of a coherent, well-coordinated system is gained at the expense of teachers' flexibility in tailoring instruction to serve their students." Don't get me started on some of the loopier ones: pass-fail grading, the replacement of phonics with whole-language learning, and Social Emotional Learning (SEL).
"Education in the United States has lurched from fad to fad for the better part of a century, finding ever-ingenious ways to underperform preceding generations," explained investigative reporter Joe Herring in a 2022 piece reviewing some of them. Apparently, there isn't enough productive employment for education PhDs, so they spend their time dreaming up big experiments to improve education rather than focusing on the obvious ones.
The process gains life as evidence pours in about the latest underperformance. And the latest data certainly is impressive, albeit in a depressing way. Following COVID-19 stay-at-home orders, traditional public schools (and California's in particular) couldn't rise to the occasion. Teachers' unions slowed re-openings. Test scores plummeted, especially for poor and minority students. Many students checked out permanently, as soaring chronic absentee rates prove.
Always eager to embrace easy-button solutions rather than, say, ideas that promote competitiveness and excellence, our school bureaucracies are on to some "innovative" ideas that have a ballpark-zero chance of improving educational outcomes. The new ones are based around the concept of equity. As with every education reform fad, they sound OK in the elevator pitch. Who doesn't support equity? But they will create a mess that further impedes student progress.
For instance, some Bay Area schools have approved "equity grading." It's strange to focus on grading rather than teaching, but the details are even stranger. The Mercury News reports that one district removed "the practice of awarding zero points for assignments as long as they were 'reasonably attempted.'" It also eliminated extra credit for class participation. EG offers students "multiple chances to make up missed or failed assignments and minimize homework's impact on a student's grade." Now it will be almost impossible to get an A or an F.
It brings to mind Garrison Keilor's Lake Wobegon, the fictional Minnesota town "where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average." Parents rightly worry that the new grading system will promote slacking. Why work extra hard when you won't be able to get an A? Why try to improve when you won't get worse than a C? It will create a false sense of equity—and make it tougher for colleges to recognize the best students.
Education theorists and consultants who promote this nonsense claim that it will encourage students and teachers to focus entirely on the mastery of material rather than surrounding fluff. They say it will better prepare students for the work world. Yet a lot of that so-called fluff—class participation, completing homework, handing in assignments on time—contribute mightily to such mastery.
Regarding the work world, ask my editor what he thinks if I miss my deadlines and still expect a paycheck. "Supporters of mastery-based grading say it could promote equity," notes an Education Next article. But will it improve learning and test scores? One needn't be a math whiz to know the answer.
State education officials also have jumped on the equity bandwagon. The California State Board of Education last year approved a new 1,000-page math framework that, as Education Week reported, "aims to put meaning-making at the center of the math classroom" and "encourages teachers to make math culturally relevant and accessible for all students." The framework isn't binding on districts, but it will influence everything from textbooks to teaching standards.
I'm not sure how to make mathematical computations more meaningful and relevant, but I suppose someone will write a book about its failures in a few years. Meanwhile, many parents know what succeeds: competition. But providing additional schooling options would pressure school bureaucracies and jobs-protecting teachers' unions to improve, and to them that's not a tolerable outcome.
This column was first published in The Orange County Register.
The post 'Equity' Grading Is the Latest Educational Fad Destined To Fail appeared first on Reason.com.
Volkswagen workers at the company's 3600-strong Tennessee plant have voted overwhelmingly to join the United Autoworkers Union.
Shortly after 11 pm ETon Friday the National Labor Relations Board, the federal body that oversees such votes, announced that 73% of the 3,600 workers at the plant who cast ballots had voted in favor of joining the union.
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Just Cause developers Avalanche have become home to the latest union in the games industry, with over 500 staff at the Swedish studio set to be covered by a new agreement formed with local labour unions.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is pushing back against claims that he sought to include a special exemption in a new minimum wage law to help a longtime friend and donor—but the governor's objections only underline how the entire law was a giveaway to his political allies.
Starting next month, fast-food chains operating in California will have to pay workers at least $20 per hour, even though the minimum wage for other jobs in the state will remain at $16 per hour. Newsom signed the bill to create that higher wage mandate, but the law includes a special carve-out seemingly tailored to exempt Panera Bread (and other chains that sell bread as a standalone menu item). Newsom had pushed for that exemption, Bloomberg reported earlier this week, as a favor to Greg Flynn, owner and CEO of the Flynn Restaurant Group, which operates 24 Panera locations in the Golden State.
After the story took off in the media, a spokesman for the governor's office claimed the allegation of favoritism was false. Newsom "never met with Flynn about this bill and this story is absurd," wrote Alex Stack in a statement to Reason and other media outlets that covered the story. "Our legal team has reviewed and it appears Panera is not exempt from the law."
The first claim might be true in only the narrowest sense. The Associated Press has confirmed that Flynn met with the governor's staff regarding the minimum wage bill and that he suggested exempting "restaurants like bakeries, bagel shops and delis" from the higher minimum wage law. Flynn denied speaking to Newsom directly, but it certainly appears that he attempted to exercise some influence over the lawmaking process.
Meanwhile, the governor's office's claim that the exemption doesn't apply to Panera only raises other questions—like, why is that exemption there at all?
That's a question that reporters in Sacramento have seemingly been trying to answer for months. Asked directly about the bakery exemption at a press conference last year, Newsom said it was "part of the sausage making" of the legislative process. In the wake of the Bloomberg story, Newsom's office has not offered a better explanation for the carve-out. Until that changes, the questions will persist.
"If [Newsom] is unable to provide a better justification for this carve-out, it raises serious questions about the integrity of his administration," a group of Republican lawmakers wrote in a letter requesting that state Attorney General Rob Bonta investigate the matter.
Newsom's explanations about the carve-out seem to be "falling apart in real time, particularly because Californians are accustomed to watching this administration hand out favors to its friends," Will Swaim, president of the California Policy Center, tells Reason.
Swaim drew a parallel to the aftermath of the passage of California's Assembly Bill (AB) 5 in 2019, which effectively banned freelancing in many industries. After newspapers complained that the law would make it more difficult for them to use freelance labor, Newsom backed a short-term and then a longer-term exemption for the industry.
Of course, the debate over the narrow bakery exemption to the minimum wage law seems to miss the larger point: the entire law is a bizarre exemption from the state's existing minimum wage statute. Maybe a special interest and personal friend influenced that one section of the new law, but there is no doubt that other special interests—labor unions that give huge campaign contributions—are the reason why the rest of the law singles out fast food restaurants while effectively exempting other employers.
In short: Newsom's claims that special interests didn't influence one part of the bill would be more believable if special interests hadn't obviously influenced the entire bill.
"This was a bad bill to begin with—imposing an unsupportable minimum wage on businesses that operate on razor-thin margins has already raised menu prices and accelerated layoffs in the industry," says Swaim. "Its victims will be small franchisees who don't have Panera's pull and workers who are now facing mass layoffs."
The post Of Course Special Interests Shaped California's New Minimum Wage Law appeared first on Reason.com.
Sultan Kösen of Turkey stands 8 feet 2 inches, making him the tallest living person in the world. This week he reunited with Jyoti Amge of India, who measures under 2 feet 1 inch and is the shortest living woman in the world. — Read the rest
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