It’s been a watershed year for workers organizing with CWA in the video game industry! Just last month, workers at Activision Central QA formed the largest video game union in industry history with CWA, bringing the total number of Microsoft video game workers with CWA union representation to over 1,000. 

Listen to Activision worker Andrew Snell discuss organizing on America’s Work Force Union Podcast.

In March, SEGA workers reached a landmark collective bargaining agreement, proving that a collectively bargained contract with substantial improvements and protections is possible even when management takes an initially hostile stance toward worker organizing.

At the Game Developer Conference last month, the largest gathering of video game developers in the nation, CWA organizers and two dozen CWA-represented workers from Tender Claws Human Union, Activision QA United, Blizzard Albany, ZeniMax Workers United, SEGA USA, and more spoke about the future of organizing in the industry and how CWA’s proven organizing strategies can continue to shape its future.

“It’s been a tough year to work in the video game industry…Together, we can change this industry for the better by continuing to organize for the pay, benefits, and job stability we deserve,” said Kara Fannon, QA Functional Tester and member of Activision QA United-CWA.

Our years of direct support for workers organizing in the industry have resulted in real gains and increased power in workplaces across the country, and we’re just getting started.

Are you an employee of the digital, tech and/or game industry and ready to get involved in the broader fight for dignity and respect at work?

Join CODE-CWA in building power across the industry!

Join us on Saturday, April 27 at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET or Saturday, May 4 at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET for an introduction to unions and organizing conversations training. All levels of experience are welcome and encouraged!

Join us on Sunday April, 14 at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET or Saturday, May 11 at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET for a building the organizing committee training, where we talk about how to build a strong organizing committee. 

Check the CODE-CWA organizer training program for even more upcoming trainings!

Journalists at four newsrooms were on strike this week during the solar eclipse: they are represented by the Austin NewsGuild, the Newspaper Guild of Rochester, the Long Beach Media Guild, and the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh.

Both Rochester and Austin were in the solar eclipse path of totality, and Austin American-Statesman and Democrat & Chronicle readers found little-to-no local coverage of the eclipse on their websites, underscoring the need for strong local journalism.

These strikes during a historic news day showed the power union journalists have when they withhold their labor.

This marks 28 strikes in 2024 so far by NewsGuild-CWA members! 

Here is how to support striking journalists.

Members of the Fordham Graduate Student Workers Union have voted by an overwhelming 98 percent supermajority to call a strike if negotiations between workers and university leadership fail to reach a fair settlement. Union members have spent 19 months negotiating for a union contract as President Tetlow and her bargaining team delay and fail to offer proposals in line with other universities. Read more.

Student workers at Berea College are forming a union with CWA. The United Student Workers of Berea-CWA (USWB-CWA) would represent more than 1,300 undergraduate students and would be the second union in higher education to represent the entire undergraduate population, after Grinnell College.

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April 7, 1947 – Some 300,000 members of the National Federation of Telephone Workers, soon to become CWA, strike at AT&T and the Bell System. Within five weeks, all but two of the 39 federation unions had won new contracts.

April 7, 2000 – Fifteen thousand union janitors strike in Los Angeles.

April 11, 1980 – Some 34,000 New York City Transit Authority workers, 11 days into a strike for higher wages, end their walkout with agreement on a nine percent increase in the first year and eight percent in the second, along with cost-of-living protections.

Source.

Sixteen Tons by Tennessee Ernie Ford (Originally by Merle Travis) 

Some people say a man is made outta mud
A poor man's made outta muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and skin and bones
A mind that's a-weak and a back that's strong
You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

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Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO, CLC.