Following ex-CEO Bobby Kotick describing authorized motion taken towards his former firm Activision Blizzard as “pretend lawsuits”, which he claims had been pushed by a union’s “plan” to extend its membership numbers, the ABK Employees Alliance has responded through social media.
“The trauma, discrimination, and abuse that our coworkers and former coworkers endured is just not pretend or a “plan to drive union membership”, it wrote, “Our unions had been born from the very actual and dangerous means executives reacted when made conscious of those conditions.
“The executives of our firm didn’t defend us, and sometimes made the state of affairs worse or straight perpetuated the hurt. That’s the reason we determined to face up for ourselves and make our firm higher, a spot the place we really lived by our core values and regarded out for each other.
“A standard misinformation tactic utilized by firms throughout a union marketing campaign is to say {that a} union is a 3rd occasion that is available in and makes modifications. This isn’t true. The employees are the union. We aren’t a 3rd occasion in search of firms to prey on. We’re staff with a vested curiosity in making our firm the perfect it may be.”
www.eurogamer.web/bobby-kotick…
The trauma, discrimination, and abuse that our coworkers and former coworkers endured is just not pretend or a “plan to drive union membership”. Our unions had been born from the very actual and dangerous means executives reacted when made conscious of those conditions.
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— ABetterABK – ABK Employees Alliance 💙 (@abetterabk.bsky.social) 12 February 2025 at 21:26
Kotick’s feedback got here on the Grit Podcast of American enterprise capital agency Kleiner Perkins. He stated of a 2021 petition signed by over 1000 present and former Activision Blizzard staff which criticised the corporate’s response to the discrimination and harassment lawsuit filed towards it by the state of California, “That was pretend”.
“I can let you know precisely what occurred,” the previous CEO said, “The Communication Employees of America union began taking a look at know-how. They saved dropping as a result of they represented the Information Guild, Comcast, and so they realised they had been dropping members at a extremely dramatic price, in order that they gotta determine how do they get new union members? In order that they first focused a bunch of various companies – Google, another tech firms, Tesla and SpaceX, and us.”
“It is the facility of unions. I did not actually perceive this till we went by this course of. They had been in a position to get a authorities company, the EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] and a state employment company known as the Division of Honest Employment and Housing [DFEH], to file pretend lawsuits towards firms like us and Riot Video games making allegations in regards to the office that did not… they weren’t true, however they had been ready to do that.”
“They got here up with this plan, employed a PR agency, and so they began attacking our firm,” Kotick claimed, “They acquired these two businesses to file these lawsuits to claimed there was some sexual harassment on the firm. We did not have any of that, and in the end they needed to admit that this was not truthful and withdraw the complaints.”
Each lawsuits had been settled by Activision Blizzard, with payouts being made to claimants within the fits and the California Civil Rights Division stating as a part of this that “no courtroom or any unbiased investigation has substantiated any allegations [of] systemic or widespread sexual harassment at Activision Blizzard”.
