This week, Activision Blizzard announced that over 1,000 of its temporary contract QA testers will be converted to full-time contracts and getting a pay bump. The move follows on from months of unionisation efforts.
As reported by Bloomberg, the change will affect roughly 1,100 QA employees at Activision's US studios. The bump to full-time employment also brings a minimum salary boost of $20 an hour. Activision also converted 500 temporary workers to full-time contracts in December last year, but it also let go of 20 temporary workers, causing a strike at Raven Software, which primarily works on Warzone at this point in time.
The QA testers at Raven Software are not included in this scheme, Activision Blizzard has confirmed. This is due to the “National Labor Relations Act”, which doesn't allow employers to “confer benefits on employees during a union organising campaign”. Currently, Raven Software employees are seeking to unionise.
This is the latest in a range of efforts to boost morale at Activision Blizzard in the wake of damning allegations, lawsuits and strikes in 2021. Currently, Activision Blizzard is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft, but legally, Microsoft can't have anything to do with the internal decisions made at Activision until the acquisition completes.
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KitGuru Says: Activision Blizzard is far from being out of the woods yet, with unhappy workers and lawsuits still hanging over the company.