The global video games market nets more than $200 billion in revenue a year. Like every other industry, gaming profits are made possible by countless workers. While many video game workers share an affinity for gaming, they don’t clock in to feed their passions. They work to survive, and many barely make enough to do that. For UFCW 401 workers in Edmonton, conditions at their minimum wage jobs were bad enough before COVID-19 hit. After video game testers were called back into the office earlier than anyone else, they started organizing. James Russwurm of UFCW 401 joins The Real News to discuss conditions in the gaming industry and share the story of how Edmonton’s video game testers found power in a union.
Studio Production: Jesse Freeston
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
James Russwurm:
My name is James Russwurm with USCW 401 out of Edmonton. I’m representing a group of video game testers at Unionized last year in April.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Hell yeah. Well, James, thank you so much for sitting down and chatting with us at The Real News Network [inaudible 00:00:19] . We are, of course, here in Montreal at the 30th Constitutional Convention of the Canadian Labor Congress. And The Real News is here to talk to as many folks as we can, learn as much as we can about what workers like yourself are going through, struggles you’re involved in, the state of the labor movement in Canada, and ultimately how we can support one another better across international lines. And I’m really, really excited to connect with you and talk about your guys’ campaign because you’re the first video game union to form in Canada. Right?
James Russwurm:
That’s correct, yes,
Maximillian Alvarez:
Man. Yeah. So I want to talk all about that and I want people to know where things stand with that campaign and what they can do to support y’all. But before we get there, let’s take a step back because I love to talk to folks about how they got into doing this work and what that work looks like, because I frankly have zero fucking clue of what video game developing, testing, what the day to day of that job looks like.
James Russwurm:
Yeah.
Maximillian Alvarez:
So I was wondering if you could tell us a bit about your path into that industry and in so doing, yeah, just give us a sense of what the day-to-day work in that industry looks like.
James Russwurm:
Absolutely. So to answer your first question of how I got into it, I actually worked in a different capacity. I worked in hospitality and tourism, prior to COVID. During COVID, I was laid off as were so many other of my fellow employees. S.
O I took it at the time, I always wanted to get into video games development that way. So I went back to school, I went to the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, and while I was there, I applied to work with Keywords Studios and they got back to me and said, “Hey, are you interested in taking this job? I said, “Yeah, that’s great. What’s the pay?” “It’s minimum wage.” And I went, “Okay, yeah, I’ll still take it.”
Maximillian Alvarez:
Was that a shock to hear
James Russwurm:
I was hoping for a little bit more than that. I wasn’t expecting them to go… So just everyone knows Alberto on minimum wage is $15 an hour, so that is the bare minimum that they could pay us, but it’s sort of a passion industry, you want to get that foot in the door. So I said, “Yeah, I’ll take the job.” Started working on it and it was great. So I started there and yeah. So what that looks like, it’s not just like you’re just coming in every day, just sitting down playing a video game and testing it. So our-
Maximillian Alvarez:
Is that what most people think you do, is just-
James Russwurm:
Yeah, that’s the-
Maximillian Alvarez:
… Sit on a beanbag and just play Sonic the Hedgehog all day?
James Russwurm:
… Exactly. I don’t even have a beanbag. I wish they’d give me a bean bag. But yeah.
So we were actually working from home because it was the pandemic and everybody was sort of working remotely. Then we had a meeting, I would say in April of last year that sort of changed things. But the actual day-to-day work is a lot of coming in. Someone will tell you, “Hey, go to this level, check out these things, write a report on it, send it back to us.” We’re going to write report files and issues, we’re going to give that back. So I did that for about a year. And then I was promoted up into a next level where I am now a quality analyst. And that throws people for some loops because they don’t really know what a quality analyst is. And what that is, so instead of being the one that writes the test, or sorry, that runs the test, you create the test.
So you’re creating the test for the workers to go do, they are testing what you need to do, and then you relay that information back to the developers and they make changes and stuff. So kind of a middleman between the testers and the developers. But it’s quite a technical job. It requires a lot of technical writing skills and a lot of know-how in sort of broader video games and how they work.
So we wouldn’t consider ourselves unskilled laborers because you pretty much need a post-secondary degree to even be considered for these types of positions. And we have people from all different types of backgrounds and degrees, everything from drama to technical design. So we really represent quite a broad selection of individuals all working as video game testers.
So in, I believe it was February of last year, we got sort of called into a meeting with our managers from Keywords Studios that said, :Okay, starting next month you’re all going back to the office full time. That’s just what’s going to be happening.” And we had been working for the last three years from home, there had been no issues regarding metrics or performance or anything like that. So it took us as a bit of surprise that there wouldn’t be any leniency, there would be no hybrid, it was just, “Nope, back in the office five days a week.”
We’re what’s called embedded services. So we work directly in the offices of the studio, which is currently BioWare, their employees were not required to come in every single day and they were offered fully remote, hybrid, whatever they wanted. So we scratched our heads a little bit at that and went, “Well, why are we being forced back into the office?”
And then for those of you who don’t know, we’re in Edmonton and downtown parking in Edmonton where our office is about $250 a month. When you’re only making minimum wage-
Maximillian Alvarez:
Jesus man.
James Russwurm:
… Over the course of a year, it’s almost 10% of your wage that you’re just paying to parking and gas and car insurance, et cetera. So plus the additional 45 minutes on your day there and back, and that’s if you’re driving. If you’re taking public transit, Edmonton public transit’s pretty bad so you’re going to be at an even further disadvantage and you’re going to spend more time on the public transit. You’re going to spend money on transit passes. It’s over $100 a month for a transit pass in Edmonton. So we were all going, “Can we afford to keep working here?” If I’ve got to go back to the office, I’m already cutting it close… I’m saving costs because I’m at home, I don’t have to commute, I can make my own food at home, I don’t have to go out for lunch or I have to work socials and all of these other things.
And so we decided, “Okay, we’re going to have a conversation.” And I approached one of our members and said, “Hey, how does this affect you? If we have to go back to the office next month, five days a week, what is your life look like now?” And they were telling me, well, “I don’t have a car, so I’m going to be spending over two hours a day on public transit just going to and from work.” And we were just like, you know, there’s got to be a better way. So I said, “How about unionizing? Are you interested?” And they went, “Yeah. What’s a union? What does that do? What does that mean?” And then that’s sort of where I started.
So I had previous experience with unions in the sense that my dad works for the Power Workers Union in Ontario for 30 years. And one of those industries, you work 30 years, you retire, you got a great pension. So I understood the power of unions at the time. And it’s been a topic in the video game industry for quite some time where people are saying, “Hey, you know, guys should unionize.” Because a lot of people don’t know that it’s quite an exploitative sector because we work in something that is a passion industry. Like I said earlier, I’m willing to accept minimum wage for the experience and the opportunity and the exposure to get into that role.
And we just sort of said, “Hey, we got to do something.” There was some questions on who would be in the bargaining unit and who couldn’t be. So what I started to do was just sort of reach out to our members, just discreetly. So we’re all remote, we’re not in the office so I couldn’t just grab somebody by the arm after work and say, “Hey, let’s go get a beer. I got something to talk to you about.” So I had to be a little bit more cryptic than that being, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the application Discord. Yeah. So we had sort of a out of work social Discord that had a lot of our members on it. And so I just started reaching out to them directly on that. A little cryptic at first, being like, “Hey, could I talk to you about something?” Yeah, I never reached it-
Maximillian Alvarez:
You up?
James Russwurm:
… Yeah. It kind of felt like that at times where you’re just like, “I don’t want to say it’s not serious, but when you got a minute, can we talk?” And that’s sort of how I started reaching out to our members sort of discreetly and building out a base. So there was about 20, 22 of us and there was some questions on who could be in the unit because we did have supervisors and managers and things like that present, but we ended up getting about 17 union cards signed. And it was great because it was electronic. With COVID one of the benefits that came out with it was you didn’t have to go and sign a union card anymore and go all over the city and track people down. It was like, “Hey, here’s a link and fill it out.”
And then what we did was we built a community within the Discords, we made up a server, and then it was like, you signed a union card, you get an invite. And then once you’re in, then you can chat to everybody else who’s already signed a union card and talk about workplace issues and talk about what’s bothering you and building this group up from the ground.
And we reached out to everybody. Everybody got a chance to say yes or no. And then by the end, we had about 17 cards signed. So in much to some of our members enjoyment, we submitted our application on April 40th, or sorry, April 20th, 4/20.
Maximillian Alvarez:
On brand.
James Russwurm:
Yeah. So we submitted that and then we took off from there. And that’s sort of how I got my start and how we got the whole ball rolling with the unionization.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Wow. I mean, that’s incredible because those basic questions that you reached out and asked your coworkers, because like you said, going back to the office… From work from home, to transitioning to five days a week in the office, that wasn’t just a, “Oh, I don’t get to wear sweatpants anymore,” which is how it’s talked about in the mainstream media. It’s like, no, this is an immediate chunk of my take home pay that just is gone.
James Russwurm:
Yep. Mm-hmm.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And I don’t know, just I’d really want to emphasize for people watching and listening to this that just taking that step to turn to your left, turn to your right, ask your coworkers, “What is this going to mean for you?” That is organizing, that is where it starts and look where it grew from there. Right?
And I wanted to just hover on the technical detail for a second.
James Russwurm:
Absolutely.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Because I talked to so many workers in the United States who are similarly trying to unionize their shops, whether they’re Starbucks workers, Amazon workers, graduate students, nonprofit workers, so on and so forth. And as you probably know, the US is not a very labor friendly place.
James Russwurm:
Unfortunately.
Maximillian Alvarez:
So when I talk to people outside of the US about the Rube Goldberg system of rules and hurdles just to get to a union and election, most people’s question is how does anyone get a union in the United States? And the sad fact is most don’t.
But I say all that to say that for us, the standard process is to get people to sign union cards. If you get above 30% of the eligible bargaining unit members in your shop to sign cards, that triggers a National Labor Relations Board election. But it’s a long, drawn out process. You get a date for an election that’s usually a month or months away. In that time, that’s when the boss can turn on the screws and hold captive audience meetings. The election process is not easy to navigate.
So there, there’s a lot of shit put in people’s way. I wanted to ask if it’s the same or-
James Russwurm:
A little bit.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah.
James Russwurm:
Yeah. So I’m from Alberta, we have a conservative government right now that just recently in their last term, repealed sort of the majority card rule. If you had majority of the workers sign a card, boom, you’re just unionized.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah.
James Russwurm:
So they got away with that. They’re just threw that out the last time they got elected. So we still had to have that month process where we had pretty well, everybody on the team had signed the card, and we had a few that were just like, “I’m just a little uncomfortable with signing the card. I’ll vote yes when the vote comes around, but I don’t want to be involved in any of this organizing system if it all goes bad.” And we respected those people and we knew we don’t want to pressure you or really lean on you. We respect your decision. We gave everybody the option to say yes or no.
So we went in with a majority. I think we had almost 70% of the team had signed cards at that point. So we knew we were in a good spot for going through the vote, but we still had our employer try to claim people who didn’t even work with us in the province to sort of dilute that pool. Right? Yeah. Because if they think, oh, maybe they just hit the minimum threshold for cards, we’ll throw some more people in there. Oh, now you don’t have them many people anymore. Too bad, right?
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah.
James Russwurm:
It turned out to be a little bit funny because when we still passed the review, they’re like, “Yeah, they got more than enough cards.” Suddenly those people are no longer a part of that bargaining unit. We don’t want you to represent those people kind of stuff. So we were like, “Okay, well, we have the cards, so what happens next?”
We had some executives fly into Edmonton, never before have we seen anybody from any other regional office or anything like that come into Edmonton. They booked like a hotel conference room and said, “Hey, we’re going to be here for two days. Come by. Tell us what your problems are. We’d love to help you solve them.” I don’t think anybody went. And I think that sent a pretty clear message to them as well.
And so after that, I think that died off a bit. We didn’t really get any captive audience meetings, I think that a lot of people get. It also helps that we’re remote. We’re all in our different homes, so they can’t come into work and ambush us and be like, “Hey, we’re all having a meeting in the office right now.” It’d be send us a Zoom link and then it’d be whatever, just minimize it and go do something else while they talk about anti-union stuff or whatever.
But never had that happen. And then eventually we got to the vote and the vote was, oh, it was also virtual. So we had signed our mail-in ballots. So we had all received them at our home, mailed them back in, they all go to back to the labor board, and then the labor board counts them. And when I was watching it on Zoom, because there was me and another member from UFCW there, and then of course a representative, their lawyer from Keywords Studios, and she opened them all and went through them all. And I’m like, “Oh, is she just checking to see that they’re all there and then she’s going to do a count?” And once she was done with them all, and she was like, “Unanimous. It’s a unanimous yes.”
And I just was like, “Yes.”
Maximillian Alvarez:
Do the slow motion pump.
James Russwurm:
Yeah. That says a good message. So I was super proud of our team there to just come together unanimously, because we didn’t want to be in a position where we had a portion of people who didn’t feel like this union was for them or it wasn’t the right fit. So just the team sending that signal to us as the organizers and to the union and UFCW and to our employer, that’s a resounding message, “Hey, we’re ready to go. We’re ready to fight on this.” And then that’s sort of… After that vote, we started getting into contract negotiations, which we’re still in today. We’re working on our first contract, and it’s slow-going, but we are talking about a lot of things that don’t exist in other union contracts. Right? We’re talking about work from home.
That is something that we want enshrined in our contract that’s sort of like, “Hey, if our workers don’t have a demonstrable need to be at the office, they should not be required to be there. And if you do require them to be there, then you got to give them some sort of stipend, a monthly allowance or something like that for parking, for fuel costs, et cetera, et cetera.” So that was one of the big factors that we wanted to do.
And funny enough, we kind of already got it because after the submission to the labor union, they have what’s called a freeze. You can’t change working conditions on the workers anymore, which means… you can’t send us back to the office. So that would be changing our working conditions. So our members have actually been able to continue working from home for the last year, and we’ve in some cases saved people about 3000 bucks a year in parking and fuel and things like that.
So it’s been nice that we’ve been able to already enact some of those changes that we were going for, which one of the big ones being work from home. We already have it right now and then when we get it enshrined in our contract and it’ll all be official.
And the other thing is obviously wages, because we get paid minimum wage, if you’re sort of a starter, just game tester, which is about 15 bucks an hour. The average price, I think about a one bedroom in Edmonton right now is $1,200 a month. So we have people who are spending almost 50% of their paycheck just to go to rent. We’ve got members who can’t move out of their parents’ place because they can’t afford a place on their own. So we’re really trying to get those wages up, at least at a living wage for Edmonton, which is about, I believe right now is $22.50. But yeah, I don’t know the way inflation’s going maybe that changed since last week.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah. No.
James Russwurm:
It’s just our way of battling back against these high prices in these inflationary environment. Right? It’s all we can do.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, and I mean, that’s without a doubt the biggest common thread that I’m hearing from workers across industries, not just here in Canada, but in the US, the United Kingdom, France, I mean, all over the world. We are in the midst of a really intense cost of living crisis.
James Russwurm:
Absolutely.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Even just the phrasing of that always creeps me out. But I mean it’s been this really big equalizing factor that I feel has brought folks in from industries that may have in the past seen themselves as separate from your standard blue collar worker. Right? I mean, you’re seeing more nonprofit workers, folks in tech, not just you all in Edmonton, but down in the states we’ve had really critical union drives and labor actions in tech, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Activision. So something’s really happening here. And what I’m hearing from more and more folks is cost of living is a big one. Right?
Regardless of the industry that we’re in, there are of course some exceptions, but by and large, people are noticing the same trend, that we’re working longer, we’re working harder, and yet it is taking more and more to make ends meet with rent, with groceries, gas, and electric bills, so on and so forth. So it really does feel like we’re all taking in water and people are turning more to unions, collective action, worker mobilization to fight for what working people deserve. And I think that’s really, really exciting to see.
And I wanted to ask in that vein if that was a difficult part of the process for you, was to get folks to see themselves as workers who should unionize in the first place? Or did y’all see yourselves as part of this groundswell that we’re seeing in tech or even beyond with the increase in immunizations, the strikes? Yeah. Was that-
James Russwurm:
Yeah. A little bit. Actually, the way we work… I look at it as we’re all workers, right? If you go to work for your money and you got to work, you’re a worker. It doesn’t matter if you work in video games, it doesn’t matter if you’re a plumber. Right? We work for our dinner, we all do. So there’s no sense in us being like, :Oh, well, we’re above this, or we don’t need collective action because we’re treated so well.” Because the reality is we’re not. The video games industry is highly exploitative in across, not even just for testers, even developers.
I don’t know if you’ve heard the phrase crunch before.
Maximillian Alvarez:
No.
James Russwurm:
But what that essentially is when you’re working on a project and you’re getting near the end and you’re going, “Okay, we have this release date that we can’t really move because we’ve shipping our products to vendors and they’re going to put it on their shelves and it’s going to be ready to go, but there’s all this work left, so we’re just going to do 80-hour weeks until that happens.” And there’s been projects that our members have worked on where that has lasted for six months.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Geez.
James Russwurm:
Just unrelenting overtime, no breaks. People sleeping under their desks is not uncommon in the sphere. And the industry’s trying to change that culture a lot, especially from the studio levels, they’re trying to get away from that, better planning, delaying games, that kind of stuff. But the reality is, for a long time, and still even to this day, that is what’s happening. These people are being exploited because they love what they do, and it’s really hard to watch and that was part of the reason that I really wanted to get a feel for how the team was feeling. Because coming into this, when I was starting, I didn’t really have any experience in video games, but the people on my team had been around the block and they had seen a lot, and they could see it a bit into the future of where we could be heading and wanting to protect ourselves against that. Right?
We’re in our contracts, overtime is a really big thing that we’re talking about, because generally that’s been the safety net for the studios is, “Oh, shit. If you can’t make our deadlines, we’ll just grind our workforce until it’s done.” And it’s not healthy, people burn out, it’s terrible for mental health. And that’s what we want to protect ourselves from is those sort of exploitative measures.
And so, yeah, we absolutely feel like we’re in line with all the other labor, because that’s what happens to almost everybody. Grocery store workers are getting hosed, this pandemic with their hero pay. And then that was taken away. We were lucky that we weren’t out on the front lines during COVID, but we 100% support everybody who was. And we want to make sure that we can make all labor better for everybody regardless of what sector you’re in.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, I’m like the hero pay is the perfect example. It’s the one that I always go back to because it makes the case to any worker out there. Even if you are in an industry where you feel like you got it better than a farm worker or a service worker or something like that. A boss’s promise is temporary, a union contract is in writing. Right? Because we saw that in the states, like Amazon got all this publicity in the early days of the pandemic when it offered hero pay, not hazard pay. Because if you call it hazard pay, then you have to keep paying as long as the hazard persists. But when you call it hero pay, it just seems like something that you’re giving out of the benevolence of your own heart. Right?
James Russwurm:
Right.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Very calculated little shits there. Pardon my French.
James Russwurm:
Yeah. They can be creative.
Maximillian Alvarez:
But it does really make the case that if we have an inflation crisis or we’re in the kind of circumstances that we’re in now, a lot of those promises, the working conditions, the pay, they can go away, they can be changed out on a whim-
James Russwurm:
Absolutely.
Maximillian Alvarez:
… And passed down unilaterally. And if workers don’t have a union, a collective voice on the job, it’s like, “What do we do? What do we say in that regard?” So it’s really is in everyone’s interest to have that organization in their workplace. Even if you like your job, which is another thing that I’ve heard from y’all is, “We don’t want to leave and just find something else. There is a lot, we’ve invested in this, but we should be paid a living fricking wage.”
James Russwurm:
And you want to be able to pay your bills at the end of the day. And that’s any worker, I feel that works a full-time normal job should be able to do that. And our members can’t right now because of the pay. And I think it was, I don’t want to say easy, because it’s organizing’s not easy. It can be difficult at times, but it’s necessary.
And if you feel that way about your workplace, if you look to the people to your left, their right, they’re being exploited, or you feel like you’re being exploited. Just talking to your fellow workers and saying, “Hey, this decision that just happened, how does that affect you? How does that make you feel?” I never knew how far that would take me to being able to organize. And I think that that’s really the message that we want to put out there is, yeah, it’s work, but it’s worth it because at the end of the day, what we have now is more than we had even before we unionized.
And we don’t have a contract yet. We have legal protections that are protecting us from just them firing us all. Right? It’s a lot harder to do those types of things once you have union recognization and then the contract comes afterwards and then whatever you can agree on. And it was an easy sell for a lot of our people because there’s not a lot of guarantees in the games industry for working, especially us as contractors. You may work on a title and then at the end of that title, they say, “Well, we don’t need any testers anymore. You’re all laid off and you can all go on EI or whatever, and next time that there’s a project you can apply and then maybe you get the job.” And the carrot that they dangle in front of you is these studios, they say, “Hey, if you know do a really good job on this, the studio’s going to want to pick you up and hire you.”And there is some truth to that. But the reality is, say you have 60 people, maybe two of those people are going to the studio.
And it also creates this sort of intercompetitiveness of people trying to stand out and one-upmanship that we really want to get away from. Right? Because what my conversation was to them, I said, “Well, what if instead of that, we could get recall legislation into our union contract that says, ‘Hey, if you worked on this project, if there’s another one coming up, they got to hire based on [inaudible 00:27:03] market.'” And that’s something else that we’re talking about with our employer as well. Because right now there is no guarantee that when you’re done a project, you’ll ever work in games like this again. Right? Maybe there was a manager that just didn’t like you and you’re just never going to make it past the interview phase. We wanted to make sure that it’s fair and that based on how much time you’ve put in, you can come back and then you can continue your work, which is more of a guarantee than we ever had before.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Hell yeah. Well, James, I want to thank you for sitting down and chatting with us. I want to thank Action Network for letting us use their booth. And I wanted to just end on a final question. Where do things stand now with the fight for the first contract? And more importantly, what can folks watching and listening to this do to stand in solidarity with y’all?
James Russwurm:
Well, to answer your first question, sort of where we are today, we’re still in the midst of negotiations. Actually. I’m doing some virtual negotiations Wednesday, Thursday with my employer. And then we’re still building out the contract, but we’re hopefully going to be done by the end of the summer, is sort of our goal. And we’ve seen movement from the management side as well as sort of a, “Okay, yeah, let’s get this wrapped up. We want to finish this.” Because they’ve been at it a long time too. They got to fly to Edmonton from Ireland anytime they come to negotiate with us. So we’re hoping that in the next couple months we’ll be able to come out and be like, “Hey, this is our contract. This is what we got.” And sort of be an example for anybody else who wants to follow afterwards.
And so what I can say to people who are maybe out there listening to this, what they can do to support us, hey, if you work in video games, find a way to reach out to us. You can probably find us through a lot of ways. We’d be happy to talk to you, share our stories and help them. But also if people could change their perspective a little bit on what we do is… we came up against us a lot, especially when the story broke. The people say, “Oh, those video game testers, they just sit around and play games all day.” Remember that we’re workers just like everybody else, and we’re just trying to get a fair deal. Just all we’re asking for is a living wage. And share that knowledge with other people. So when maybe you hear about another games worker who’s down and, “Oh, my job is killing me.” Say, “Hey, look at these people. Have you considered unionization? Because so far it’s worked well for them.” And yeah, that’s what I’d like.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
