Unionisers at Call of Duty studio Raven are excluded from Activision’s QA pay rise

Developers unionising at Call of Duty Warzone studio Raven Software will be excluded from an upcoming pay rise for Activision Blizzard’s quality assurance workers.

On Thursday, the publisher announced that all of its US-based QA testers will be converted to full-time employees beginning in July.

The employees will also receive a wage increase to a minimum of $20 per hour.

However, this won’t apply to the QA testers at Raven who have been fighting for improved working conditions at the company since last year.

This is “due to legal obligations under the National Labor Relations Act,” an Activision Blizzard spokesperson Bloomberg.

As spotted by PC Gamer, the National Labor Relations Act doesn’t allow employers to “confer benefits on employees during a union organizing campaign to induce employees to vote against the union.”

The group of Raven employees seeking to unionise, which calls itself the Game Workers Alliance, said it was “thrilled” with Thursday’s announcement of improved employment conditions for Activision QA staff, but called the decision to exclude it from the upcoming benefits an “attempt to divide workers & undermine our right to unionize”.

“The company’s assertion that the NLRA prevents @Activision from including Raven QA workers is simply a ploy to punish us for choosing to stand shoulder to shoulder with our fellow workers as @WeAreGWA,” it argued.

“Activision’s announcement is further evidence of the need for ALL workers at Activision Blizzard to have a protected voice on the job.”

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Workers at Raven Software went on strike in December in protest of Activision plans to downsize the studio’s QA department. They ceased strike action in January after announcing their intention to unionise with the Communication Workers of America.

Activision Blizzard chose not to voluntarily recognise the union, leaving the workers to seek having the union certified through an election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board.