Activision Blizzard exec sends email to employees discouraging potential unionization

Activision Blizzard employees received an email recently indicating improving company culture should be achieved within the company, and not through a union organization.

A Washington Post report indicates the companywide email was sent to Activision Blizzard employees by chief administrative officer Brian Bulatao.

The email comes in the wake of employees who are considering forming a union, and have been asked by the media labor union Communications Workers of America (CWA) to sign union cards - which could result in employees voting to go union. The email also comes after a strike fund was created on GoFundMe for Activision Blizzard workers who walked out in protest over the recent redundancies at Raven Software which affected 60 employees.

In the email, Bulatao states there could be “consequences” to signing with the labor union, and that “dialogue between leaders and employees” is the “better path.”

“We ask only that you take time to consider the consequences of your signature on the binding legal document presented to you by the CWA,” stated Bulatao. “Achieving our workplace culture aspirations will best occur through active, transparent dialogue between leaders and employees that we can act upon quickly.

"That is the better path than simply signing an electronic form offered to you by CWA or awaiting the outcome of a legally mandated and regulated bargaining process sometime in the future.”

Speaking with The Washington Post, Cornell University’s Risa L. Lieberwitz, a labor and employment law professor, stated the email “plays close to the line of illegality” by implying that the company’s “pledged progress” in workplace conditions is “linked to the company being nonunion.”

Lieberwitz also states that the email “presents a hard-line, anti-union message to pressure employees against supporting unionization."

Things have been sour at Activision Blizzard since a July lawsuit by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing was brought against it for allegations of discrimination and sexual harassment.

And things seem to not be getting worse for the company as six US state treasurers are pressuring it to respond to its sexual harassment scandal via a meeting with the board members by December 20. They have threatened action against the company if it does not meet their demands.