Picture by way of Sega
SEGA made some waves just lately by buying cell sport studio Rovio out of Finland for $775 million. It’s fairly massive information for SEGA and the gaming trade as a complete. Maybe realizing change is afoot, workers of SEGA have introduced they’re unionizing.
A “supermajority” of staff mentioned they’d unionize because the Allied Staff Guild Enhancing SEGA, or AEGIS.
The account mentioned mentioned the brand new union was filled with “passionate, onerous working folks” who “deserve a say in our working circumstances.”
“We’re unionizing as a result of we love the video games that we work on, we love our coworkers, and we love working at SEGA. However sadly for a lot of this job shouldn’t be sustainable. Our objective is to make SEGA someplace the place we really feel workers can thrive for a few years to come back.”
In its imaginative and prescient assertion, AEGIS mentioned it was at the moment receiving “wages which might be beneath the trade common, weak advantages, and an absence of paths to promotion.” The group defined that staff should make a residing wage, and that “a 3rd of SEGA’s long-time staff” are nonetheless not given full-time standing.
AEGIS desires the next base pay for all workers and advantages like healthcare, retirement and distant work alternatives. It’s additionally asking for “clearly outlined alternatives for development.”
“Our calls for,” AEGIS mentioned, “are already in step with SEGA’s core values.” It desires SEGA to “acknowledge our democratic proper to prepare with out interference by voluntarily recognizing our union.”
Why now? Maybe workers notice that an organization that may throw round $775 million needs to be paying its staff higher. There are 144 staff forming the union, per TechCrunch. Employees at ZeniMax and Activision Blizzard each unionized final yr, so it’s not like there isn’t a precedent right here.
We’ll preserve you posted.