It took nearly 3 years of negotiation
- by Ben Kerry
Raven Software, the team behind the campaign portion of last year’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, is this week celebrating a fresh union contract that guarantees improved working conditions over at Xbox.
Per a post from the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the group of Raven employees who voted to unionise had been working on a contract with Microsoft for almost three years – a contract that has just been agreed. Here are some of the key rights these developers now have:
- A guaranteed 10-percent wage increase over two years with additional raises through merit and promotions, after going 18 months without wage increases and 45 months without promotions;
- The elimination of crunch time, with seven days’ notice required for mandatory overtime, no excessive overtime on back-to-back weeks, flexible scheduling of overtime, and no mandatory overtime of any duration for the majority of weeks in a quarter;
- Bridging of time worked as a temporary or contract employee, defined job descriptions and a fair promotions process, expanded disability accommodations, and layoff protections including severance, recall rights, generous COBRA subsidies, and career transition services.
Within that CWA post, several Raven workers commented on this result; most of them thrilled to have finally worked something out with the Xbox owner. One employee said to have these negotiations “finally pay off feels incredible”, while another added that “ratifying this contract is a win for game workers everywhere”.
Of course, the timing of this contract feels apt, considering Microsoft just laid off thousands of workers – a chunk of them from Xbox teams including the likes of Raven Software. The workers who are a part of this union will no doubt feel a little safer after this contract was successfully negotiated, and we sincerely hope that we don’t hear about more mass Xbox layoffs anytime soon.
Happy to see Raven get success here? Talk to us about this contract deal down below.
[source cwa-union.org]
Ben is a News Writer at Pure Xbox, and is a fan of action, racing and straight-up shootin’ in any Xbox game he can get his hands on. When he’s not clutching an Xbox controller like his life depends on it, Ben spends his time listening to music that’s far too old for him, watching football on the telly and probably eating somewhere.
