Microsoft-owned ZeniMax Media and a union representing hundreds of its workers have reached a tentative agreement on a first labor contract.
The process to get there was long and wasn’t without drama, given that just one month before, union members aligned with the Communications Workers of America overwhelmingly authorized a strike in a bid to push through some additional gains at a turbulent time in the video game industry.
“Going toe-to-toe with one of the largest corporations in the world isn’t a small feat,” said union bargaining committee member and QA tester Page Branson in a statement. Branson called the agreement a “monumental victory” for current and future video game workers.
A Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement that the deal represents a “meaningful step forward” and “a shared commitment to constructive dialogue and a common goal of fostering a positive workplace.”
The provisional deal, which won’t go into effect unless members ratify the agreement in a vote that ends on June 20, would apply to more than 300 quality assurance workers represented by three separate CWA Locals. The staffers work at company sites in Hunt Valley and Rockville, Maryland and Austin and Dallas, Texas.
Said the vice president of one of the CWA Locals representing the workers, Local 6215’s vice president Alex Doblado, “Even amidst a rapidly evolving industry with significant volatility and job insecurity, video game workers never lost sight of what they deserved.”
Reached after two years of negotiations, the deal raises minimum salaries for workers and provides for other wage increases, said the union, which didn’t offer further details as of press time. It institutes a new credit policy that the union says will acknowledge QA testers’ roles in the games they help produce, creates grievance procedures and “includes protections against arbitrary dismissal.”
It also enshrines a deal, reached in 2023 between the union and the studio, that requires the employer to provide advance notice of any uses of AI that could affect union members and to negotiate those impacts at the labor group’s request. The agreement also established particular “guiding principals” to the use of AI in the workplace.
When they went public in 2022, the ZeniMax workers became the first group to attempt to organize a union at Microsoft. As part of a labor neutrality agreement Microsoft made with the CWA earlier that year, the tech giant agreed to voluntarily recognize the group if enough workers signaled their support for joining.
In a statement, CWA District 2-13 vice president Mike Davis said he looked forward to negotiating contracts for other video game workers in the near future. “This is just the beginning,” he said.