A major labour organization is launching a campaign to unionize the entire Quebec video game industry — a field plagued by mass layoffs in recent months.
Faced with professional burnout, job insecurity and disparity in treatment, some current and former video game workers like Rida Hamdani believe creating a union would mitigate those challenges.
Hamdani worked in quality assurance before leaving the field. Now, he’s involved with Games Workers Unite Montreal, a group working with Quebec’s Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN) to improve working conditions in the industry.
“I think there is renewed interest in unionization because working conditions have changed,” Hamdani said. “We are in an economic crisis. Many people are starting to reconsider their situation.”
Thousands of video game employees worldwide were fired already this year, putting 2024 on track to outpace job losses in 2023.
Of the 15,000 people in Quebec who work in the $1.4-billion video game industry, the CSN told CBC News no game developers are union members.
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The city is known for its thriving video game industry, but lately it’s been facing some choppy waters. A few high profile studios have announced layoffs.
Inspired by Starbucks and Amazon employees, where unions have made some inroads, Game Workers Unite and the CSN want to create a national union for video game workers.
“It is a very important industry in Quebec, an industry that is capable of meeting the needs of its employees,” Hamdani said. “But often, passion is a source of exploitation,” he said, adding that many workers do not necessarily know their rights.
The video game industry sold “a supposedly cool workplace, to make people accept that the hours were endless,” said CSN president Caroline Senneville, noting that layoffs and unpaid overtime in the field have generated more interest in unions.
Senneville said that as the industry matures, staff are juggling more responsibilities than they did when they were newly minted graduates, meaning a perk like having a ping-pong table at the office “just doesn’t do it anymore.”
“When you’re working and everything’s great for you, you don’t always feel the need to unionize,” she said.
Rare for the industry
Jonathan Lessard, an associate professor in design and computation arts at Concordia University, says it’s “pretty exceptional” for game studios to be unionized.
Unionization efforts have been underway for a decade, he says, but they haven’t had significant results.
Lessard noted that the value of the industry is based almost entirely on human resources.
“The situation is more difficult,” he said. “Those in the industry may be more risk-averse.”