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CD Projekt Red devs unionise after its third round of layoffs in three months
(www.eurogamer.net)
this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
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Other devs, please follow suit.
This industry needs class consciousness in it yesterday.
Just because you're paid well doesn't mean you're not being mistreated.
It's valid to be thankful for what you have but to also know you deserve more.
I wish developers would learn that just because they're well paid doesn't mean they're getting the full value of their work. Your CEO didn't become a billionaire by paying you the full value of your labor.
There's always room for more and unions can get that.
This is from a Swedish perspective, but: My experience with unions has been that they think it's more important that nobody is paid more, than to pay everyone what they're worth. In other words they'd prefer everyone being paid equally over raising the minimum wage. Their motivation seems based in jealousy more than a sense of justice. The money they collect from their members is spent on offering stupid IT courses that nobody (except unskilled people) needs, or stuffing their own pockets.
I like the idea of a union, but to me it seems like the actual unions we have today either lack real problems to solve or forgot about them. Every time a representative comes to visit I just get angered by how out of touch they are. They should focus on their core values and get rid of all that idiotic fluff, so they can lower their fees and recruit more members. But like any organization they grew fat and slow.
Lack real problems to solve? Wtf. Also your experience with unions seem very biased.
*or forgot about them.
Ensuring that people know how to use Excel is not a problem that the union should be spending money on.
At my office we can work at any hours of the day that we prefer, as long as we check with our coworkers and do our agreed 40 hours / week. When the union heard about this they told my employer that we must do all our work during daytime.
Their reasoning was that our liberal hours give us the opportunity to take on more obligations in our personal life at daytime (such as taking kids to soccer practice) which means we have to work in evenings to make up for lost time. And this, in turn, means we don't get enough rest. So basically they don't trust the employees to take responsibility for how much rest they need and want to stop them from doing personal chores during the day.
We (the employees) finally won against the union in this, but what I kept thinking during this ordeal was "jeez, don't they have more important issues to address?" If they did, why would they be meddling with this.
I think you don't understand unions or what they are fighting for. Your presumed freedom in working hours is exactly what the unison stated. If you need freetime to fix chores you should reduce your working hours and not work throughout the night.
Yes, but then that's my choice to reduce my working hours, not something my union should force on me. It's patronizing. All ~100 employees disagreed with the union on this. IMO that's a sign that they are overreaching and forget who they are working for. They need to realize when they are done and just sit back and enjoy what they've accomplished, instead of mindlessly optimizing for the wrong target. At any rate, if this is the kind of stuff they pull I won't want to support them, because to my mind they are making things worse, not better.
Every single industry needs unionized, the country is FUCKED right now for millions of it's inhabitants.
The country.
Totally fair point, I am American and I was referring to America, but this is likely true for at least a few other countries as well.
This article is on Eurogamer.net and CD Projekt Red is Polish. I imagine that's why they pointed out "the country" being out of place
Oh, thanks for clearing it up, I actually didn't know CD Project Red was Polish, thanks.
They currently are in the process of building up branches in Boston and Vancouver though as far as I know.
FTFY
without unions there could be a huge salary disparity between devs in the same role, in the same company, even in the same project. I've personally witnessed more than 2x, heard about even more.
Sometimes it's more than justified with individual's performance and impact, sometimes it's not. Some people are just better skill-wise, some people are better at applying pressure on their employer, holding business-critical knowledge hostage or simply negotiating.
Point here is - while unionizing might make things better on average, there would be a very real pushback from people who are benefitting from current system and this is not necessarily management. For management in some cases it would be even a net benefit, since they don't have to deal with primadonnas and someone tying things to themselves just for leverage.
As an engr manager, I've often seen disparity as a result of being hired during good years vs bad years for the company. Or when someone gets a better offer to leave, the company may change their pay but no one else's. Or hiring externally vs a transfer from another internal team. Or whether the team is coding for frontend web vs dev tools, even if using the same language. Or if female.
It's always a challenge for one person to fix -- with HR, with the department head, with yearly budget. And sometimes fixing one disparity means not having the sway to fix another as well.
Which is to say -- pay transparency and unions are good for everyone. And if the company can't afford to treat the employees equitably, then the company shouldn't exist. (Or it should reduce its avocado toast budget.)
It would being better pay, better benefits, even more stable careers and better work-life balance.
It doesn’t matter how much money you’re already making, or how good your benefits already are. If you have a Union, you can negotiate for improvements. There is always room for improvement, unless you’re working at a fully-mutual workers cooperative.
I’d be interested to learn more, do you have a source or anything?
This, plus, relying on the goodwill of someone who benefits from you earning as little as possible is a terrible idea.
This does suck though. To start, a counter-offer-based model begs discrimination. You should be getting yearly raises commensurate with (at absolute bare minimum, not even necessarily accounting for inflation) the increase in productivity from year to year.
This is to say nothing of work environments. Unions could reduce or end crunch. Not just as hard blockers, but mandating the kind of project management that doesn't require crunch.
There's also a history of wage suppression.
https://www.inc.com/jeremy-quittner/silicon-valley-wage-collusion-class-action.html
They'll only get better at it, especially as the market continues to turn and companies continue to consolidate.
I see that a lot with just the starting percentages of yearly raises. Most companies never keep up with market value, and by the time you've spent ten years there, you're making much lower than the industry standard.
The worst is employers who have some 1-5 scale for yearly performance and they gatekeep bosses who try to give out too many 5s. It's not a competition among your peers. If the whole team is doing good and working hard, then reward all of them.
It’s not that you don’t have individual bargaining power. It’s just that if you were unionised, you’d have much more.
The extent to which you are arguing against overwhelming evidence cannot be understated. You are arguing against something less controversial than evolution.
High unionization levels are associated with positive outcomes across multiple indicators of economic, personal, and democratic well-being
How unions help all workers
Unions provide major economic benefits for workers and families
How is it hand wavy?!
Imagine you are an employer with 100 employees, presented with the following situations.
In which of these two situations are you more likely to be willing to grant that 50% raise?
I don't even have to do that. My employer always give me good raises and even better bonuses. Every year.
Benefits are great. PTO is great. Work-life balance is great. No layoffs whatsoever. It's not just about making money for the company and the owners, but the rest of the employees as well.
I don't need the strife from trying to start a union here. Save it for companies that have pushed their employees too far. Unionize where it's going to have the greatest benefit.
Ever talked to the cleaning staff how they're faring? Your suppliers in Cambodia (or wherever)?
It's not that hard for capital to see reason when it comes to specialised, educated, and sometimes right out irreplaceable workers, but that doesn't mean that capital suddenly developed a conscience.
We don't have cleaning staff. Try again.
Why? What is your reasoning for rejecting this? Can you justify it? You’re just saying “no” without any thought or explanation. Do you just refuse to believe that things could be better?
I read your whole comment, but at no point does it explain why you think you wouldn’t be able to negotiate improvements with a union. What you have written essentially amounts to:
“I was able to build a really beautiful cabinet with hand tools. I reject the notion that power tools make it easier to build cabinets. I know people who have power tools but they haven’t made cabinets as nice as mine.”
If you have multiple people as a group who have the power to completely sink a business negotiating together, they stand a much better chance of improving conditions than any of them do alone.
How are you reasoning against such a self-evidently true claim?
I’m in the same field as you are with years more experience. Not only that, I have experience in management in the same field.
I am not denying that you have individual bargaining power that I’m sure you’re leveraging successfully.
I am just pointing out to you that if you were unionised, you’d have even more bargaining power which would almost definitely have resulted in a better outcome for you.
Collective bargaining may not be risk free, but it’s lower risk than individual bargaining, by definition.
There’s plenty of proof, and I don’t see why I need any more. You’re just refusing to acknowledge it, like a flat earther faced with the results of their experiment refusing to accept it. Just because you say “no, I don’t like this scientific proof” it doesn’t mean that I’m somehow failing to back up my argument when I refuse to give you more proof. You have THE proof of the matter. Accept it and be right, or reject it and be wrong. It’s up to you.
As for your analogy, being in a union does not mean you lose your individual bargaining rights, you can continue to negotiate your salary individually if you wish to do so. You do not lose any power or rights from being in a union. You only gain power.
I appreciate the good faith you're putting into this. I tend to lean your way, but it's interesting to see this discussion play out. Thanks for being respectful. I appreciate it, even though (up to this comment) I'm just observing the thread.
I'm not in games, but if/when things start to turn, it's far easier for myself and the people around me to just leave for an employer that treats us right than to try to unionize and force the current one to behave. Those are the benefits of having a job that's very much in demand though, not to mention one that can be worked from home and isn't dependent on geography, so the union isn't necessary because the employees already hold enough power. If the employer has a monopoly on your jobs, being able to unionize is a powerful tool in your toolbelt.
the funny thing is actual ability to pay is varying from business to business. AAA development with in-house engine is simply inferior as a business compared to mobile gamedev or producing shitty battle royale clones with Unity. If some business can't compete with big tech or low-effort money grabbers, does it mean it has to go?
No, for the same reason that fine dining restaurants don't go out of business when there's a McDonald's around the corner. They're different markets.