Little of Microsoft’s ‘principles for employee organizing’ is actually pro-union

Thursday afternoon, Microsoft’s president and vice chair Brad Smith penned a blog post outlining four “principles” the company would be adopting in response to the recent wave of union efforts in the US. Admittedly it’s surprising for a company this size in the tech industry to — in word or deed — strive for anything less than the complete destruction of any organizing effort. But Smith’s post contains precious little substance.

Let’s begin with the bolded line right past the preamble: “Our employees will never need to organize to have a dialogue with Microsoft’s leaders.” Anyone who has ever been involved in an organizing campaign will recognize this as a gentler version of the typical management talking point that a company “prefers a direct relationship” with its employees. The reason being, of course, that without an observer or weingarten rep present, a boss or human resources staffer is free to intimidate an employee or bury a complaint. Even in less sinister scenarios, while a one-on-one meeting might feel equitable on its face, it isn’t: a boss has the force of the company behind them; a worker lacks that, and is dependent on that same company for their livelihood. The entire purpose for voicing complaints as a group, legally recognized as a union or not, is to limit that vast disparity in power.

This same line of thinking is restated in Smith’s first principle:

We believe in the importance of listening to our employees’ concerns. Our leaders have an open door policy, and we invest in listening systems and employee resource groups that constantly help us understand better both what is working and where we need to improve. But we recognize that there may be times when some employees in some countries may wish to form or join a union.

Once again, the implication veers strongly towards a preference for dealing with workers individually. And the linguistic turn that those interested in joining or forming a union are only “some employees” in “some countries” reads as an attempt to undermine such efforts as the work of a vocal minority. 

We recognize that employees have a legal right to choose whether to form or join a union. We respect this right and do not believe that our employees or the company’s other stakeholders benefit by resisting lawful employee efforts to participate in protected activities, including forming or joining a union.

The first half of principle two, reproduced above, could be just as easily restated as “we are committed to obeying the law.” It doesn’t matter whether Microsoft “recognizes” that the NLRA exists any more than it “recognizes” it can’t write whatever it wants on its SEC disclosures. This is simply how things are. Of course, understanding workers have the right to organize hasn’t stopped other tech companies (most notably Amazon) from engaging in anti-union actions that have often been found to be in contravention of the NLRA. 

Where things get interesting is the second half of this principle, which sounds an awful lot like a promise of non-interference. Certainly, members of the tech press haveinterpreted it that way. But saying Microsoft might not “benefit” from resisting a union campaign and stating plainly that it will not work against such a campaign are not the same. This particular phrasing also does not claim an anti-union campaign would be actively harmful either, meaning shareholders likely wouldn’t have recourse to sue the company if it chooses to take that approach down the line. 

We reached out to Microsoft to ask if it will agree not to hold captive audience meetings or engage union-avoidance law firms to carry out similar actions on its behalf; we also asked if it will agree to voluntarily recognize union drives within its ranks. A spokesperson for the company told Engadget that “Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn’t have anything further to add at this time beyond what’s included in Brad’s blog.”

We are committed to creative and collaborative approaches with unions when employees wish to exercise their rights and Microsoft is presented with a specific unionization proposal. In many instances, employee unionization proposals may open an opportunity for Microsoft to work with an existing union on agreed upon processes for employees to exercise their rights through a private agreement. We are committed to collaborative approaches that will make it simpler, rather than more difficult, for our employees to make informed decisions and to exercise their legal right to choose whether to form or join a union.

If this isn’t de facto an undermining of the union process I don’t know what is. Rather than accept a “specific union proposal,” Microsoft is saying, quite clearly, it prefers to do something other than agree to that proposal — and in the form of a “private agreement” to boot. (Collective bargaining agreements, which govern the relationship between an employer and it unionized employees, are typically public.) Likewise, anyone should feel a deep suspicion in Microsoft’s claim that it can help its workers make “informed decisions” on the kind of workplace they’d prefer to have while also representing its own interests as a business.

Building on our global labor experiences, we are dedicated to maintaining a close relationship and shared partnership with all our employees, including those represented by a union. For several decades, Microsoft has collaborated closely with works councils across Europe, as well as several unions globally. We recognize that Microsoft’s continued leadership and success will require that we continue to learn and adapt to a changing environment for labor relations in the years ahead.

Principle four is almost entirely fluff. It contains no explicit promise on how Microsoft will comport itself differently. Presumably, a company cannot help but maintain a “close relationship” with the people who comprise that company. But it also recalls one of the few instances in which a Microsoft-associated company did successfully organize. In 2014, bug testers who were contracted through an outside firm, Lionsbridge, managed to form a union; within a few years, all 38 of them were laid off. Workers filed a complaint with the NLRB regarding the mass layoffs and Microsoft reportedly spent four years attempting to stall the process and convince the agency it should not be considered a joint employer. While Microsoft’s Phil Spencer has more recently voiced support for the group of recently-organized quality assurance testers at Activision Blizzard (which Microsoft is in the process of acquiring), that could just as easily be read as an attempt to twist the arm of the FTC: allow this $69 billion anti-trust nightmare to go through and we won’t try to crush the first union within a North American AAA games studio.

While some research has indicated unionizations can lead to a temporarily more frigid response from Wall Street and a small reduction in overall profits, other studies indicate a unionized workforce is just as productive, happier and incurs less turnover — presumably the sorts of qualities a mature business like Microsoft would want to foster. Microsoft could very easily help set an industry-wide precedent by committing to meaningful, well-defined policies: not principles, or goals or a corporate ethos, but actual policies which executives could be held accountable for failing to follow. If and when that time comes it will be a cause for celebration, but it isn’t today.

Texas’s bizarre social media law suspended by Supreme Court

Texas’s HB20 was put on hold Tuesday by the Supreme Court, five-to-four. As is typical for emergency for emergency requests, the majority did not define its reasoning; Justice Alito wrote a six page dissent joined by fellow conservatives Gorsuch and Thomas, while Kagan, a moderate, wrote she would “would deny the application to vacate stay” without signing onto the dissent.

The bill — which has been tied up in court since it was passed by the state’s Congress and signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott last September — targets “censorship” by online platforms, insofar as conservatives have in recent years been wont to conflate any form of content moderation with censorship. It reframes large social platforms as “common carriers” similar to telecom companies, but uses that logic to restrict the ability of platforms to limit the spread of, ban or demonetize content based on “the viewpoint of the user,” whether or not that view is expressed on the platform. 

Unsurprisingly, the content, users and viewpoints the law’s supporters believe are being unfairly targeted hew rightward: as the Texas Tribunereported last year, Governor Abbott said he believed social platforms were working to “silence conservative ideas [and] religious beliefs.” The aggrievement of the interested parties and their desired outcomes weren’t lost on Judge Robert Pitman of West Texas’s District Court, who wrote that “the record in this case confirms that the Legislature intended to target large social media platforms perceived as being biased against conservative views.” 

An emergency application to the Supreme Court to suspend HB20 was filed earlier this month by two tech industry groups — NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) — after a Fifth Circuit court had lifted an injunction on the law, doing so in a startling 2-1 decision for which no explanation was provided. Netchoice’s members include Airbnb, TikTok, Amazon and Lyft among many other; Apple, Google, eBay, Meta and others count themselves among those associated with CCIA. Counsel for NetChoice at the time told Protocol that the Texas law was “unconstitutional” and would compel “online platforms to host and promote foreign propaganda, pornography, pro-Nazi speech, and spam.”

These same concerns were given new urgency after the Buffalo, New York shooting, in which a gunman with white supremacist beliefs killed 10 people and injured three others in a majority-black neighborhood while live-streaming the carnage. Social media companies worked to remove copies of the footage from their services. Even as they did so, the question remained unsettled as to whether those removals would result in Texas dragging these platforms into court. Confusion as to the law’s application was not limited to interested observers, either: in a Twitter exchange with Techdirt’s Mike Masnick, the sponsor of the bill seemed unsure on how such situations would play out. 

A related law in Florida, using a similar common carrier approach, had most of its major provisions deemed unconstitutional by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month. The question of constitutionality for HB20 will continue to move forward in the Fifth Circuit Court. 

Apple Store workers in Georgia call off union vote over intimidation claims

Less than a week before its scheduled date, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) have decided to withdraw a formal vote on unionization for Apple Store employees at Atlanta’s Cumberland Mall location. As first reported by Bloomberg, the union — which has recentlyinvestedheavily in organizing tech workers — opted to hold back as a result of what it called “Apple’s repeated violations of the National Labor Relations Act.” 

The withdrawal follows weeks of escalating tensions between Apple and its retail staff. Shortly after Cumberland had gone public with its intentions it was reported Apple had retained Littler Mendelson, the same law firm Starbucks — which is undergoing a wave of store unionizations — has engaged. The firm’s website states: “we excel in union avoidance.” Shortly after, Apple corporate began circulating anti-union talking points to managers and Atlanta workers claim they were being force into so-called “captive audience meetings,” a hallmark of union-busting campaigns. Earlier this week, audio leaked of an Apple VP, Deirdre O’Brien, expressing why she believed a union was a poor fit for the company. That message was reportedly sent to all 65,000 of Apple’s retail staffers.

In a statement today, CWA stated that Apple’s actions “have made a free and fair election impossible.” The group also expressed concern that COVID cases among the store’s staff might further jeopardize their ability to vote in person. 

One of the most significant reasons behind Cumberland staffers’ decision to organize has been simple economics. In talking with Engadget, one of the store’s workers, Elli Daniels, described stagnant wages that had failed to keep pace with either national inflation or local increases to cost of living. Notably, Apple has been one of the few companies to thrive under pandemic conditions, posting several consecutive record-breaking quarters. 

Perhaps in an effort to stave off unrest among retail staff (Cumberland is onlyone of the stores currently exploring unionization) Apple has stated it will increase pay to a starting wage of $22 per hour. “We are pleased to offer very strong compensation and benefits for full-time and part-time employees, including health care, tuition reimbursement, new parental leave, paid family leave, annual stock grants and many other benefits,” Apple told press today in a statement. (The pay increase, incidentally, was reported several hours after the aforementioned union-avoidance audio leaked to press.)

While an immediate setback, the withdrawal does not preclude CWA from attempting another union election — though it will have to wait at least six months to refile.

Is Revolution’s InstaGLO smart toaster worth $399?

As part of Cooking Week, we set out to test some of the most niche (and, in some cases, ridiculous) kitchen gadgets we could find. We wanted to know if these impressive-looking appliances actually do what they claim and if they’re worth the splurge. These are our findings.

Some devices, through their longevity, ubiquity, market saturation and the frightening power of economies of scale, have become essentially unimprovable. Among these, arguably, is the humble toaster — a product which has in the 130-odd years since its invention become so thoroughly standardized and affordable that most consumers probably could not tell you what brand of the thing is sitting on their kitchen counter. They all do the same thing (turn bread into crunchy bread) and they’re all somewhere in the neighborhood of $30.

Does such a device truly need to be improved upon? The team at Revolution evidently believe so, or one assumes they would not have spent time and money developing the InstaGLO R270 smart toaster.

Out of the box, the InstaGLO’s distractingly bright touchscreen has a number of settings for the level of desired toasting based on different kinds of bread (sourdough, multigrain, bagel, etc.) or different states of bread readiness (fresh, frozen, reheat.) Then again, so does my fully analog $30 Cuisinart. And in the defense of the cheaper option, I’d feel comfortable with and capable of disassembling that toaster and replacing anything that broke while the InstaGLO presents an impenetrable enigma of unnecessary engineering complications.

The foremost of these is perhaps the most obvious feature upon use: there’s no lever AKA the sticky-outie plastic tab you press down to carry the bread into its miniature furnace. Tapping ‘BEGIN’ on the front plate sends the bread gently downward all on its own, and shortly thereafter the same mechanism levitates it back up to a comfortable grabbing height, “so you never have to reach into the toaster with a fork again,” so says Revolution’s marketing copy. Grabbing hot food from the toaster has never presented much of an obstacle for me — perhaps I’m just built different! — but that is a problem easily solved by wooden toast tongs, which can be had for around $5. Or leftover takeout chopsticks, for free. Or just allowing the passage of time to cool the toast to a handleable temperature. Also free. (I can’t recommend sticking a metal fork into an electrical device.)

The Revolution InstaGLO R180 Toaster on a countertop next to a bunch of bananas, a pour-over coffee maker and a box of Grape Nuts cereal.
Bryan Menegus / Engadget

Of course if moving carbohydrates up and down a few inches was its only selling point the InstaGLO would be a transparent racket. No, the foremost stated innovation is faster heating, which Revolution claims “sears” bread rather than drying it out — crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, or so I’m told. While it certainly does manage to put a frozen slice of country wheat through the Maillard reaction a bit faster, whatever promises of a softer interior had been made were either unrealized or undetectable by my toast-stuffed mouth. And if several hundred dollars of unrealized toast dreams are already burning a hole in your pocket, maybe try one of those steam-based ones that were (are?) popular in Japan. Never tried it, but I hear good things.

It’s possible — likely even — that there are more discerning toast connoisseurs who would notice, appreciate and feel comfortable paying a premium for that experience. The time saved was essentially immaterial to me, as I typically spend the time the bread is cooking to feed the cat, make tea or whatever other morning puttering needs doing. If money is no object and you absolutely have to choke down a slice of crisp multigrain between your morning spin class and 9AM executive meeting, sure, do what makes you happy. But that speedier toasting time also presents a major flaw when it comes to the InstaGLO’s accessories. (Yes, there are now dongles. For a toaster. What bold and unprecedented times we live in.)

For a jaw-dropping $80 you can separately purchase a miniature panini press — another kitchen apparatus that can be had for $30 to $40 from any number of no-name manufacturers. Despite having two toasting slots, the InstaGlo Panini Press only works in the right-hand side, and in truth does a better job of smooshing bread into the approximate shape of a panini than actually cooking one. After several attempts using fresh and frozen bread, lightly oiling the insides of the press (or not), I was met with disappointing results every time. Not only did the exterior fail to reach the crunchiness one expects with a pressed sandwich, I suspect the faster cook time is to blame for the failure of the cheese to melt. At all. I gave this thing the easy task of thinly sliced, low-moisture mozzarella and it just couldn’t stick the landing.

The Revolution InstaGLO R180 Toaster on a countertop next to a bunch of bananas, a pour-over coffee maker and a box of Grape Nuts cereal.
Bryan Menegus / Engadget

Notably, too, the InstaGLO Panini Press is tiny. Some fussing is required to fit even supermarket-style square loaf slices inside. And while I tend towards the Alton Brown axiom of never buying unitasker devices for my (small, already crowded) kitchen a true panini press — or hell, even one of those George Foreman things — can comfortably fit slices from the center of a boule (as god intended) or a halved baguette (if you’re in a desperate situation. I’m not here to judge that.) And it bears mentioning, this problem isn’t limited to the panini add-on either. As with any cheap, conventional toaster, and longer slices will require a flip-and-retoast maneuver, somewhat undermining Revolution’s promise of “no double toasting needed.”

The Warming Rack ($30) sits over top of the device and, despite the toaster as a whole having the ability to cook bread for varying amounts of time, the rack simply has no options whatsoever. It does its thing and if your pastry or whatever is not warm enough, either cycle it again or deal with it. I tested this with a slice of some banana bread I’d made a few days prior. The exterior facing the heating elements wasn’t even warm enough to melt butter; the top was room temperature.

Should you buy a fancy toaster? Hell, we’re probably heading into another major recession, but who am I to tell you what to do with your money. And this model’s shockingly bright touchscreen (which as best as I can tell can never be turned off) makes a good night light if you’re trying to find the bathroom at 3am. Despite bold claims though, there’s very little that’s revolutionary about the InstaGLO.

Intel engineers, led by a Congressional hopeful, demand a union

Intel, which is both the biggest semiconductor company by revenue and the largest private employer in Oregon, is facing an apparent bid for unionization among its exhausted engineering workforce. In a press conference Wednesday afternoon led by current engineer and Congressional hopeful Matt West, he described the employment arrangement at Intel as being “expect it to be on call at all times.”

“For too long, my fellow engineers have worked 80+ hour weeks, transitioning at a whim between day shift and night shifts as management demanded. We are on call all of the time, to the point where you need a manager’s approval to be more than two hours away from the factory,” West said standing in front of the aforementioned factory in Hillsboro, Oregon, flanked by colleagues and local labor leaders. “If you were called at 2am on a Saturday, and you’re supposed to have off, and if you don’t answer that phone within 30 minutes, they call your manager instead. And there are consequences.” 

According to a spokesperson for West, the organizing efforts have been ongoing for over a year, but have not been public before today. The engineering unit, which covers an estimated 350+ workers, is “the biggest unionization effort Intel has ever faced,” the spokesperson wrote. 

“I once worked more than 80 hours in a week for three months straight. I only had three days off, total, in that time,” West said. “I broke down. Both my mind and my body suffered. And at that point, my doctor mandated that I take a two-week emergency medical leave to recover.” Once he returned to work he says he “was placed on formal notice for not having warned my manager in advance about my emergency medical leave.”

In addition to working long hours — longer hours than allowed by Oregon law, according to West’s office — and being asked to be available at the drop of a hat, West further accused Intel of intentionally hiring from the pool of workers who were fresh out of college or graduate school in order to have leverage over them. All this, he said, was doubly felt by those engineers who were working via H1B Visas. “They feel trapped,” West said, paraphrasing conversations he’s had with colleagues, “They say they cannot raise these issues themselves out of fear of deportation for them and their families.”

Beyond his own experiences, West read out a number of anonymous statements from his colleagues, which recounted similar issues. One claimed that on “most days I work 10 to 16 hours,” while another stated they were told to “cover a 14-hour night, shift seven nights in a row.” A third wrote that “there is no proper path to promotion for high performing engineers.” (Transparency around pay and promotions is another issue the union is organizing around.)

West called on Intel to sign a neutrality agreement (in effect, saying the company would not interfere with organizing efforts, subject workers to anti-union messaging, engage in captive audience meetings or other familiar tactics) and asked the company to voluntarily recognize the union. While it’s not clear what union the engineers intend to join — or if, like Amazon workers in Staten Island they intend to form their own from the ground up — West’s spokesperson confirmed the Intel cohort have been in touch with the Communications Workers of America. 

As mentioned, West is — outside of his job at Intel and organizing activities — on the ballot to run for the House of Representatives for Oregon’s 6th district. That election takes place less than a week from today.

Engadget has reached out to Intel for comment and will update if we hear back.

A simple string of “and”s seem to crash Google Docs pages

And. And. And. And. And. 

For whatever reason that specific string of words seems to be enough to permanently brick a Google Docs page. Noted Google’s support pages mere hours ago, the poster who seemingly discovered this unusual bug is quick to point out that the series of five conjunctions, separated by periods, is case-sensitive (at least if the goal is to cause the document in question to become unusable.) 

Engadget was able to confirm the issue on a 16-inch 2019 MacBook Pro running Monteray 12.3.1 and Google Chrome 100.0.4896.127… and we were summarily greeted by the “Something went wrong” popover as well as its loathsome cousin “Unable to load file.” Reloading the page as prompted results in the same popovers. In effect, a death loop. 

Attempts to replicate the issue on Firefox 99.0.1 on a (significantly older, worse) MacBook Pro running Big Sur 11.1 were not successful but a respondent on the Google Support forums claims to have experienced the same problem on the same version of FireFox. 

What exactly is happening here remains a mystery, though we’ve reached out for clarity on what is likely a small if amusing technical oversight. How this bug was even discovered is itself an enigma, given that there’s rarely cause to pile a slew of Ands on top of each other like this. Project Gutenberg turned up no instances in its database, while a (cursory) search through Google Books produced at least one example — seemingly meant to reproduce the effect of stammering — though it did quite meet the punctuation or capitalization criteria. We’ll update should we hear back. 

Update 5/5/2022 6:00pm: Well, nothing from Google just yet, but a reader reached out on Twitter to illuminate how the and-polypse was found in the first place: poetry! A Hacker News user (who shares the same name as the Google Support poster and is, in all likeliness, the same person) writes: “Discovered by Eliza Callahan triggered by a poem in the middle of her novel. (Friend of a coworker).” 

That poem’s been posted online here if you feel inclined to read it — though the site it’s hosted on notes the novel is “forthcoming.” Here’s hoping the draft was recoverable, Eliza! 

Netflix’s Tudum lays off staff months after launch

Netflix assembled an impressive roster of writers and editors for its fan site project, Tudum, which launched in early December of 2021. Today, a significant portion of those new hires have been sent packing for reasons unknown. 

A swath of the site’s formerstaffannounced their departures today on Twitter, with former Vice culture writer Josh Terry claiming “laid off my team,” suggesting the cuts may be drastic. Netflix claims there are no plans to mothball the site. It declined to comment on the number of workers who were impacted but confirmed that some amount of staff and contractors had been let go; The Hollywood Report placed its estimate at least 10 people. 

All a Netflix spokesperson would tell Engadget on the record was that “our fan website Tudum is an important priority for the company.” 

Tudum was billed by Netflix on launch as “a backstage pass that lets you dig deeper into the Netflix films, series, and stars you love” — essentially an attempt to prop up a media business on the strength of the streaming platform’s original content. It’s not clear at this time what kind of change in staffing or strategy prompted this round of layoffs, who remains at the site or if the newly-separated writers and editors were given any advance notice. 

The job cuts come not long after Netflix announced during its quarterly earnings that it had lost subscribers (approximately 200,000 of them) for the first time in a decade. What followed was a swift and brutal backlash from the market that saw the streaming service’s share price drop by 25 percent. So far it’s plans to turn the ship around have been limited to trying to stop customers from sharing login information, and mulling the idea of a cheaper ad-supported subscription tier. 

Were you recently let go from Tudum? I’d like to hear from you. Download Signal messenger for iOS or Android and text me confidentially at 646 983 9846. 

Verizon fires worker for union organizing, CWA alleges

successfully voted to join the Communications Workers of America (CWA). Now the company has fired Jesse Mason, a worker at the nearby Seattle Northgate and Aurora Village locations. He contends his sudden separation from the company was an illegal attempt to prevent more stores from organizing, and has, with the help of the CWA, filed an unfair labor practice (ULP) charge against the company with the National Labor Relations Board.

Mason, who previously worked with AT&T (which is unionized under CWA), started at Verizon in August and had received no prior disciplinary actions — in fact, he told Engadget, he was one of the top Specialists at his branch. It wasn’t until his annual review that he started to wonder if maybe unionization could be a path toward making Verizon more equitable. 

“They were like, ‘Well, you’re newer to Verizon, therefore because you’re new your raise for the whole year is going to be 1 percent. It is not negotiable,” he told Engadget. Performance notwithstanding, 1 percent did little to offset the cost of living in the greater Seattle area, or the country’s soaring 8 percent inflation rate. “When you’re giving people a 1 percent raise, that’s the same thing as giving them a pay cut,” he said. 

What solidified his decision to reach out to CWA was seeing the nationwide push by Starbucks workers to organize. In specific, attending a rally in his area sometime in February.

“A week after the Everett and Lynnwood vote went public, that they pulled me aside and told me that they were launching an investigation,” Mason said, though he was unable to go into details on the nature of the investigation pending his ULP, “But it was about something very minor and easily correctable.” What made this stranger, was the speed and lack of adherence to internal processes in his case. “There’s some progressive discipline, like verbal warning, and a written warning and a final, final warning,” he said “With me, the next shift that I worked after I was at the watch party to celebrate those stores unionizing, they said that the result of the investigation was my immediate separation from Verizon.” 

Mason claimed to have never been given any of the documentation related to the investigation. 

In between the union drive going public a few miles away at his sister stores and Mason’s firing, he also claimed Verizon flew in several company higher-ups — something a worker at the Lynnwood and Everett locations also alleged happened after going public. One manager, according to Mason, pushed misinformation regarding the cost of union dues to CWA, despite such contracts being publicly available. 

“Mr. Mason’s termination had absolutely nothing to do with union activity. While we’re not going to publicly discuss the reasons for the dismissal, we intend to vigorously defend ourselves against these baseless accusations,” a Verizon spokesperson told Engadget. “We respect the rights of our employees to choose whether or not they wish to be union-represented and we routinely provide facts to our employees so that they can make an informed decision for themselves.”

CWA Secretary-Treasurer Sara Steffens has called Mason’s firing “a clear tactic meant to intimidate other workers,” and it’s difficult to argue that Verizon’s actions may have a chilling effect on organizing efforts in the area. Still, Mason said he’s fully confident the NLRB will find in his favor and reinstate his job with backpay. But the among of rigamarole in the meantime shows the limits of the agency’s power.

“I think that this case really shows some of the weaknesses of the NLRB currently, not just being understaffed, but that even if I do get my job back, it’s not like one of those lawsuits where someone slips and falls and they get millions of dollars in settlements,” Mason said. “There’s no real consequence for this kind of retaliatory union busting.” He added wryly, “I think it’s a bad idea, because it’s only going to have me work on union stuff full time until I’m back there.”

 Updated with comment from Verizon. 

Are you a Verizon worker looking to organize? I’d like to hear from you. Download Signal messenger for iOS or Android and text me confidentially at 646 983 9846.

Raven Studio game testers can vote to form a union, NLRB rules

A group of 21 quality assurance testers at Raven Software have received the blessing of the National Labor Relations Board to conduct a union vote, per a 27-page ruling from the agency released Friday. Raven’s parent company — Activision Blizzard —did not respond in time to a request for voluntary recognition for the new union, the Game Workers Alliance, back in January. 

Tensions within the company came to a head last December, when approximately a third of the group’s QA testers were suddenly laid off — after several months of promises to improve compensation. Raven workers began organizing shortly thereafter, and engaged in a weeks-long strike. 

Once they returned to work, however, they were informed their unit would be broken up. “Our QA colleagues will embed directly within various teams across the studio,” was how Raven Studio head Brian Raffel put it at the time, a move the seemed intended to stymie unionization efforts. 

Since then, Activision tried to convince the NLRB that the dispersed nature of the QA team should be grounds to dismiss the vote. But as per today’s ruling, the agency didn’t sign on to that view. According to Jennifer Hadsall, a regional director of the agency, there is “no evidence that Q.A. testers are being eliminated or that their role would fundamentally change with the embed process.” Activision also tried (and failed) to convince the NLRB that the entirety of Raven Studio’s estimated 230 employees would need to be included in the vote.

“We are pleased that after reviewing the evidence, the National Labor Relations Board rejected Raven Software management’s attempts to undermine our efforts to form a union,” a group of Game Workers Alliance organizers told Engadget over email. “It’s now time for Raven management to stop trying to prevent us from exercising our rights. We are looking forward to voting for – and winning – our union.”

According to a statement from Activision, the company is “disappointed that a decision that could significantly impact the future of our entire studio will be made by fewer than 10 percent of our employees.” The company is also seeking avenues to appeal the NLRB’s ruling. 

Raven software was founded over 30 years ago and had a hand in producing some beloved games like Heretic and Hexen during the golden age of first-person shooters. Since its acquisition by Activision in 1997, it’s role has largely been reduced to maintaining the Call of Duty franchise. 

Tensions between Raven and its owners have mirrored those within Activision Blizzard at large, where sexual misconduct claims, allegedly covered up by the company’s top brass have roiled rank-and-file workers. Employees staged a walkout last November in disgust, to voice dissent against the corporate culture in general and CEO Bobby Kotick in specific. Earlier this week it was reported that on two separate occasions, Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg used her influence to allegedly quash negative stories about Kotick, her then-boyfriend, that were in the works at British tabloid The Daily Mail. 

The NLRB will begin mailing out ballots to eligible part-time and full-time QA workers, who will have until May 20 to cast; a vote count is presently schedule to take place on May 23. 

Are you an Activision Blizzard worker with a tip to share? You can reach me confidentially on Signal messengered at 646 983 9846.

Apple Store workers in Atlanta are forming a union ‘because we love this company’

When Elli Daniels started working at the Apple Store in Cumberland Mall location in Atlanta, her hourly wage was $16.50 — rosy by comparison to the federal minimum Georgia adopts, but below average for sales in her metro region. Three years later and in spite of several raises, her pay has nowhere near kept up pace with national inflation, or Apple’s soaring profits for that matter. 

She’s one of the 100 eligible workers at the Apple Store location that petitioned the National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday, with the backing of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), to hold a union election. It will be the first such election for an Apple retail location in the US.

“One of the biggest things that we’re fighting for is going to be for fair pay and a livable wage, because with Atlanta being such a huge city, it’s just getting more and more expensive to live here,” Daniels told Engadget. “Everybody deserves the opportunity to be able to not worry about whether they can afford food or pay their bills. Everybody deserves to be able to afford to live in the city that they work in.” 

Daniels, a product zone specialist, was clear however, that her and her coworkers’ desire for better pay isn’t borne out of grievance. By all indications a sincere devotee of Apple’s products, she specified that “we want to do this because we love this company, not because we want to turn our back on them.”

Similarly to the Google Fiber retail workers who recently unionized in Kansas City, Missouri, Apple has been completely silent on the issues, according to Daniels. “We haven’t heard anything from Apple corporate at all.” Consequently, the workers and CWA opted to file for both voluntary recognition and a union election simultaneously. Apple’s silence seems to indicate the company intends to let things go to a vote, though we’ve reached out to them for confirmation. 

Over the pandemic years, Apple has raked in tremendous profits, even as the economy at large suffers. It has posted record-breaking quarters over and over, but the winnings aren’t being distributed equally, according to Daniels. Raising wages is an obvious way to relieve material hardship for Apple Store workers, some of whom have “had to leave the company because they just needed more money to be able to pay their bills, because they were growing a family.” But it’s also a philosophical means to “try to close the gap” between corporate and retail employees. “It’s really important that both sides of the coin get fair treatment in the company that we all work for,” she said.

Cumberland workers aren’t alone, either. Apple Store workers in New York City’s Grand Central terminal, backed by the Fruit Stand Workers United, recently called for a minimum wage of $30 per hour. They’re also riding a wave of newfound union sentiment displayed by the first successful unionization vote at a US Amazon warehouse, as well as a rash of successful union drives across Starbucks locations nationwide. As yet, Apple has not seemingly deployed the same captive audience meetings and union-busting techniques those companies have become increasingly associated with. 

“We love Apple no matter what,” Daniels stressed, “I think it’s all just making sure that we all can put our heads together and really make Cumberland the best place that it can be for all of us — both for us that are here now, as well as people that are that are here in the future.”