I can't wait for the industry to fully unionize so instead of waiting 3 to 4 years for a game to release it will be 6 to 7 years. We'll see work stoppages and everytime a developer claims harassment or poor working conditions then every company will strike and nothing will get done.
Oh and because they unionize companies won't hire as many people because what game developer is going to pay for health insurance and benefits for multiple studios with hundreds of employees? The answer is not many. I can't wait to read articles about studios closing down because the games it took 6 years to make didn't sell 2 .5 million copies to break even. Unionizing sounds great on paper until a company decides that they're going to downsize and then pass what someone else's work would be on to you.
The same shit happens in grocery retail you become ahead of a department. Then because the store doesn't want to hire more help they just give you more work to do. Now you're doing an order, unloading the truck, cleaning the shelves, rotating stock etc. Oh someone from your department decided that they were gonna take a week off? You have to come in and do their job now on top of doing your own. Being in a leadership position in a gaming company that's unionized would be a fucking nightmare.
Did you want to negotiate a new contract with the company you work for? Yeah that company's gonna have all the leverage because they can just replace you with somebody who just graduated from college and paid them about 30 to 40% less than what they pay you even though that you've worked for so many years in the video game industry. Why? Because they don't have to keep you after your contract is up. In fact they don't have to negotiate with any union and just hire temp workers which is what they'll do.
Yup.
Games will take longer to make. But it's not like a game taking longer to release means higher sales go with it.
So if game unions win, that's fine you got your 9-5 job. But now the studio has a choice. Take much longer to release the game, or release the game as scheduled but it'll be much shorter or shittier. Or somewhere in the middle. Either way, something has to give.
A unionized office of any sort would be a nightmare. There's already enough people I've seen going on sick leave here and there due to a real illness. It'll probably 5-fold as people take advantage of being absentee and the union protects them. You see it all the time. Contract time is coming and somehow all these unionized workers call in sick at the same time.
Unions jobs are often very specific by agreement, as the worker doesn't want responsibility to do any more than stated on that piece of paper. I've seen it myself. Had a government union worker join one of my old companies back in the day and she made an issue with the director because he wanted her to do something not on the job description.
Ridiculous.
That job description probably has vague statements about the role and maybe 10 bullet points. How anyone can think you should only do those tasks forever is insane. It'd be like getting hired for an office job and since it didn't say you had to make Powerpoint slides, you never have to make one forever. It's not like he asked her to be a janitor of cafeteria cook. Office jobs by nature are flexible and you need to do different things or pinch hit if another department needs help.
That's the mentality of a union worker.
At one of my old jobs we were pushing to make the quarter so the VP of our division asked us to go down to the shipping bay and help out doing basic tasks like wrapping skids and moving them to the shipping area lined up. Not a hard job to do. I've done that before. It was even easier as the company had automated wrapping machines while I had to hand bomb wrapping by hand with a manual handheld gadget at my summer job before. Easy as fuck.
The union members down in the warehouse floor made a stink about it. Even to a VP. They didnt want us touching the skids. Many of us have experience doing this shit (I know how to drive a forklift too), so were here just to help. Not take your jobs. So relax.
Well, if you lazy fucks hurried up and hustled (it's amazing... if you've ever been in a warehouse/shipping area how much they stroll around with little hustle), we'd make the quarter and everyone is happy. The image of a blue collar warehouse guy is a dude sweating working asap to fill trucks. What a crock of shit that is. During university I worked at 3 summer jobs where I did blue collar work. Nobody was hustling like their life depended on it. The only big hassle I saw was one time the truck backed into the shipping bay and there was a gap so our forklift got stuck as the wheel got lodged in the hole. It took another forklift to get some straps and try pulling it loose. Was much harder than it looks, as if it fucked up that forklift might crash land below if the truck move away. Our department does the sales and finance. You fucks get it out the door.
