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    Workers at Microsoft-Owned Activision Vote to Unionize

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    The group will become the largest union at a video game company in the United States, while Microsoft pledged to stay neutral on the vote.About 600 workers at Activision Publishing, the video game maker owned by Microsoft, are unionizing, forming the largest video game workers’ union in the United States, the Communications Workers of America said on Friday. Microsoft recognized the union after the vote count was finalized.The employees work in quality assurance, testing Activision’s games for bugs, glitches and other defects, and 390 of them voted to form a union, while eight opposed the effort, the union said. About 200 workers did not vote.Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard, the maker of Call of Duty and other blockbusters, for $69 billion in October. As part of its lengthy effort to convince regulators to approve the deal, Microsoft signed a first-of-its-kind pact in the industry to remain neutral if workers wanted to unionize with the C.W.A.Managers were trained not to express an opinion about whether unionization was good or bad, and the C.W.A. said Activision’s management upheld the pact and did not interfere in the workers’ organizing efforts.“That has been, organizing-wise, a huge blessing,” said Kara Fannon, a member of the union organizing committee who works for Activision near Minneapolis. “It has helped with a lot of people who were concerned about union busting or potential retaliation.”The new union is the first at Activision since the pact went into effect.“Microsoft’s choice will strengthen its corporate culture and ability to serve its customers and should serve as a model for the industry,” C.W.A.’s president, Claude Cummings Jr., said in a statement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Video Game Workers at Microsoft and Activision Take Steps to Unionize

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      Microsoft has remained neutral during a labor organizing bid as the Xbox maker seeks regulatory approval for its Activision acquisition.A few months after Microsoft announced plans to acquire the video game maker Activision Blizzard, the tech giant said it would remain neutral if Activision workers sought to unionize once the deal went through. Now, a major union is testing Microsoft’s appetite for organizing at a company it already owns.A group of more than 300 employees at ZeniMax Media, a Maryland-based video game maker owned by Microsoft, has begun voting on whether to form the company’s only union in the United States.The vote, among quality assurance employees at ZeniMax, which includes prominent studios like Bethesda Game Studios, is taking place under an informal agreement in which Microsoft is staying neutral. Workers can sign a union authorization card, as some began doing last month, or weigh in anonymously for or against unionization on an electronic platform that opened on Friday.The process will conclude at the end of the month and is more efficient than a typical union election, which is overseen by the National Labor Relations Board and can involve legal wrangling over the terms of the election.The same day that voting began at Microsoft, a group of workers in quality assurance, or Q.A., at an Activision-owned studio near Albany, N.Y., won a union vote, 14 to 0. That result followed a successful union vote in May by about two dozen Q.A. workers at an Activision studio in Wisconsin, a first for a major North American video game maker. Activision’s planned acquisition by Microsoft, for about $70 billion, is facing antitrust review by regulators.The organizing campaigns at both companies have been under the auspices of the Communications Workers of America, which also represents employees at telecom companies like Verizon and media companies like The New York Times.Together, the developments appear to add momentum to a wave of union organizing over the past year at previously nonunion companies like Amazon, Starbucks and Apple. The recent campaigns also suggest that video game workers, who for years have complained of long hours, low pay, and sexual harassment and discrimination, may be increasingly receptive to unionization.More on Big TechMicrosoft: The company’s $69 billion deal for Activision Blizzard, which rests on winning the approval by 16 governments, has become a test for whether tech giants can buy companies amid a backlash.Apple: Apple’s largest iPhone factory, in the city of Zhengzhou, China, is dealing with a shortage of workers. Now, that plant is getting help from an unlikely source: the Chinese government.Amazon: The company appears set to lay off approximately 10,000 people in corporate and technology jobs, in what would be the largest cuts in the company’s history.Meta: The parent of Facebook said it was laying off more than 11,000 people, or about 13 percent of its work forceA 300-worker union would be “quite groundbreaking” and could propel Q.A. workers, and even other game workers like developers, to unionize at other large studios, said Johanna Weststar, an associate professor at Western University in Ontario who studies labor in the industry.A Microsoft spokeswoman said that the organizing campaign was “an example of our labor principles in action” and that the company remained “committed to providing employees with an opportunity to freely and fairly make choices about their workplace representation.”The union campaign at Microsoft would affect Q.A. workers at several gaming studios that are a part of ZeniMax Media, including Bethesda, which makes hit franchises like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout.Microsoft, which makes the Xbox series of consoles, acquired ZeniMax for $7.5 billion, a splashy pandemic purchase that helped it compete against rival Sony and its PlayStation consoles, as well as broaden the appeal of Xbox Game Pass, its video game subscription service. The deal closed last year.The first new major, exclusive-to-Xbox game stemming from that purchase, Starfield, is expected to be released next year by Bethesda. Some of the workers who test it may do so as union members.Three ZeniMax employees said that while helping to make video games was a job they had once dreamed of, their Q.A. roles had taken a toll.Victoria Banos, who has worked at one of the company’s studios in Maryland for over four years, said many of her co-workers endured a ritual known as “crunch” a few times each year. It involves working shifts longer than 10 hours during the week and several hours on Saturday, sometimes for weeks in a row, to ensure that a game works properly before the company releases it.“You’re expected to drop whatever you have going on in your life and work whenever they need you to,” said Ms. Banos, who works on The Elder Scrolls Online. She added that ZeniMax had recently made these overtime hours voluntary, but that many employees still felt pressure to work them.She estimated that her hourly wage of $25.50 left her tens of thousands of dollars below what she would earn annually if she performed a similar job at a different kind of software company — like one that makes financial or security software.Other gaming industry Q.A. testers have echoed these points, citing crunch as a continuing problem and arguing that the industry gets away with paying them less because of the allure of its products and the idea that they should be happy to earn an income playing games. Workers say the mind-numbing process of repeatedly testing specific actions for glitches is far different from playing a game for fun.Some ZeniMax workers also said they preferred more liberal policies on working from home, and they complained that the company’s method of allocating training opportunities, additional responsibility and promotions was often arbitrary or opaque. They said they hoped a union would help create more transparent policies.Andrés Vázquez, who has been based at a ZeniMax studio in the Dallas area for more than seven years, said he had yet to be promoted to the next job level, senior Q.A. tester, even though some co-workers who joined the company around the same time had been promoted beyond that level. Whenever he has raised the issue with managers or human resources officials, he said, “I get corporate lip service.”The Microsoft spokeswoman said the company was talking to employees to ensure that they were not taking on too much work, but she did not comment on the other concerns.Still, the workers praised Microsoft for following through on its promise of neutrality. Unlike workers at Starbucks and Amazon, they say, they have not been summoned to meetings in which supervisors seek to dissuade them from unionizing, and they do not feel that the company has retaliated against them for trying to form a union. (Starbucks and Amazon have denied accusations of retaliation.)“It’s been an incredible weight lifted off our shoulders,” said Autumn Mitchell, another Q.A. employee based in Maryland, who has worked on Starfield, the forthcoming game.Workers at the studio near Albany also cited concerns over pay and hours in their decision to unionize, as well as accusations of harassment and discrimination at the company.Amanda Laven, a Q.A. employee involved in the union campaign at the studio, said workers were frustrated that the company had tried to stop their union election on the grounds that it involved only Q.A. workers rather than the whole studio. The National Labor Relations Board had rejected Activision’s attempts to stop the union election at its Wisconsin studio on similar grounds, but the company appealed to the labor board in this case as well.“It’s just a stall tactic,” Ms. Laven said in an interview before the vote count.An Activision spokesman said that the company’s operations in New York and Wisconsin were “very different” in their setup and that it believed the entire Albany studio should be eligible to vote. The spokesman said the company was “considering various legal options,” including seeking to overturn the election.Activision workers seeking to unionize could find the company more receptive in the future.In June, Microsoft announced an agreement with the Communications Workers of America in which it pledged to stay neutral if any of Activision’s U.S. employees sought to unionize after it completed its acquisition. Activision has about 7,000 employees in the country, most of whom are eligible to unionize.Microsoft had a motive for seeking the neutrality agreement: The politically powerful communications workers union had raised questions about the acquisition, which regulators were vetting. The union said its concerns about the acquisition had been resolved after it reached the neutrality agreement.The company hinted at the time that it would extend the neutrality agreement to current Microsoft employees, saying it was prepared to “build on” the deal. The union essentially tested that proposition when it sought to organize Q.A. workers at ZeniMax, and Microsoft followed through.Microsoft may have had an additional reason to take a neutral stance. Showing that it has a healthy relationship with organized labor could help the company navigate the acquisition under the union-friendly Biden administration as scrutiny of the deal intensifies.As if to underscore the point, the union’s president, Chris Shelton, met with the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission in October and urged regulators not to block the deal.Karen Weise More

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      FTX’s Near-Collapse Batters the Crypto Industry

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      Prices of digital currencies have tumbled even after the exchange FTX announced a provisional lifeline by a top rival, Binance. A humbling downfall for Sam Bankman-Fried.Erika P. Rodriguez for The New York TimesA crypto giant’s fate is in doubtDevastation in the crypto market continued on Wednesday, after the giant crypto exchange Binance announced a bombshell deal to buy its embattled rival, FTX. (The deal excludes FTX’s American operations.) The entire market’s capitalization now stands at $900 billion, down from $3 trillion just one year ago, while major cryptocurrencies were down by double-digit percentages. The damage is largely contained within crypto; both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq closed up yesterday.But investors fear that Binance won’t go through with the rescue plan, and that more pain awaits after their industry’s biggest Lehman-esque moment to date.What happened? Binance, an early investor in FTX turned rival, said over the weekend that it planned to sell its holdings in FTT, a token used for trading on FTX’s platform — a stunning move that cast doubt on the financial health of FTX and its trading arm, Alameda Research. The token’s value has plunged by roughly 80 percent in the past 36 hours to just under $5.Traders withdrew over $1.2 billion from FTX on Monday alone, according to the research firm Nansen. By Tuesday, FTX had stopped processing withdrawals; its chief executive, Sam Bankman-Fried, who was reportedly casting about for a financial lifeline from billionaires, finally turned to Binance for salvation.Binance has cemented its dominance over crypto. It was already the largest exchange worldwide for digital currencies and derivatives; FTX’s trading volumes in September were just a fraction of Binance’s. Its founder, Changpeng Zhao — widely known as CZ — showed off his power by effectively kneecapping FTX and then swooping in with a rescue. “This elevates Zhao as the most powerful player in crypto,” Ilan Solot of the derivatives trader Marex Solutions told The Financial Times.It’s a humbling downfall for Bankman-Fried, who in just three years rocketed from obscurity to become one of the best-known moguls in crypto, earning comparisons to Warren Buffett and J.P. Morgan. Months ago, Bankman-Fried sought to live up to the Morgan comparison, swooping in to bail out troubled crypto companies like Celsius and Voyager Digital (deals whose status is now unclear); he also became a frequent presence in Washington, calling for more regulation of the crypto industry, to the ire of CZ and other executives.At the beginning of the year, FTX was valued at $32 billion, backed by heavyweight investors like BlackRock, SoftBank and Tiger Global. (Investors said yesterday they were blindsided by the deal.) The 30-year-old Bankman-Fried — known in the crypto world as S.B.F. — was said to have a net worth of over $16 billion. But a document leaked to CoinDesk purportedly showed that FTX and Alameda, whose finances had long been murky, were highly illiquid and financially vulnerable.The crypto world fears other shoes will drop. Investors worry that CZ may yet pull out of his rescue deal: He noted on Tuesday that the transaction was nonbinding and subject to due diligence. Meanwhile, tokens associated with FTX, including Solana, have continued to plunge in value.Other crypto players sought to distance themselves from the FTX meltdown. Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, the biggest U.S.-focused exchange, said FTX’s troubles appeared to arise from “risky business practices” that his company doesn’t engage in. Still, Coinbase shares fell nearly 11 percent yesterday.And regulators say the news justifies more scrutiny of crypto companies. “This is a major market event for the digital asset sector,” said Joe Rotunda of the Texas State Securities Board Enforcement Division, which had already been investigating FTX.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING Elon Musk sells billions more in Tesla stock to pay for his Twitter deal. He sold nearly $4 billion worth of shares in recent days, according to regulatory filings, bringing his total sales for the year to $36 billion. The electric carmaker’s shares were up slightly in premarket trading.The United Nations seeks to end “sham” corporate net-zero pledges. Companies that claim to be trying to cut carbon emissions but invest in fossil fuels should be shamed, António Guterres, the U.N. secretary general, said at COP27. Meanwhile, more rich countries pledged to pay poorer ones compensation for damage from climate change.Disney reports a jump in streaming losses. The media giant said its direct-to-consumer unit — including Disney+ — doubled its third-quarter losses from a year ago, to $1.5 billion. But Disney said the quarter was the “peak” for losses, and noted it had added 12 million new subscribers.TikTok lowers its worldwide revenue targets amid a spending slump. The video platform cut its sales goals by 20 percent after its advertising and e-commerce operations struggled, The Financial Times reports. TikTok also revamped its leadership in the United States.Adidas cuts its profit forecast after breaking from Kanye West. The warning from the sportswear giant came weeks after it ended its highly profitable collaboration with the rapper now known as Ye. Separately, Adidas named Bjorn Gulden, the former head of Puma, as its next C.E.O.The red wave that wasn’t Republicans haven’t quite had the night they expected. As of 7 a.m. Eastern, Republicans were 21 seats shy of retaking control of the House. But leadership of the Senate remains up in the air after the Democrats flipped a seat in Pennsylvania. Here are the big highlights so far:Pennsylvania: John Fetterman, the state’s Democratic lieutenant governor, beat Mehmet Oz in the closely watched Senate race. Political analysts now say Democrats need to win two of three hotly contested Senate races — in Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, all currently held by Democrats — to maintain power in the chamber.Georgia: The Senate contest looks like it’s headed for a runoff on Dec. 6, pitting the incumbent, Raphael Warnock, against his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker.Governor races: Voters backed high-profile incumbents, including Kathy Hochul, Democrat of New York; Greg Abbott, Republican of Texas; and Tony Evers, Democrat of Wisconsin.Ballot initiatives: Voters in Michigan approved making abortion access a right protected under the State Constitution. Those in Maryland and Missouri voted to legalize marijuana, though similar measures were rejected in Arkansas and North Dakota.A rough night for Donald Trump: Several candidates that he endorsed, including in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania, lost or were behind. And a potential rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, handily won re-election.Meta slices through its work forceFacebook’s owner Meta will lay off 11,000 employees, equivalent to 13 percent of its work force, the company announced on Wednesday morning, in the biggest restructuring in the social media giant’s history. A slump in digital advertising and ballooning losses from its pivot to the metaverse have pushed the company to make a series of wide-ranging cuts.In a note to employees, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s co-founder and C.E.O., admitted that the company had hired too aggressively during the pandemic as homebound consumers spent more time socializing and shopping online. Meta mistakenly assumed this trend would continue: “I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that,” he wrote.The company has begun cutting costs across its operations, “scaling back budgets, reducing perks, and shrinking our real estate footprint,” Zuckerberg wrote. The stock was up 3.7 percent in premarket trading, outperforming the Nasdaq.The economic downturn is forcing companies across industries to shrink. Citigroup and Barclays are expected to lay off hundreds in their investment banking units, Bloomberg reports. And, according to Protocol, Salesforce could cut as many as 2,500 positions in the coming weeks as the activist investor Starboard Value seeks big changes in corporate strategy.Exclusive: Keurig Dr Pepper buys stake in Athletic Brewing Keurig Dr Pepper has invested $50 million in Athletic Brewing, the nonalcoholic beer company, as part of a $75 million fund-raise by Athletic, DealBook is first to report. It’s the beverage giant’s second foray into the nonalcoholic booze category — it announced a deal to acquire a nonalcoholic cocktail brand called Atypique this summer — and another sign of interest in this fast-growing category.Athletic Brewing was founded in 2017 by Bill Shufelt, a former trader at the hedge fund Point72, and John Walker, a former craft brewer. It now sells its products — including lager, light beer and sparkling water — at retailers like Trader Joe’s. With its new backer, Athletic is looking to expand in Australia, France and Spain.Sales of nonalcoholic beer are skyrocketing, growing almost 70 percent between 2016 and 2021 in the U.S., to about $670 million, according to Euromonitor. While that is still a tiny portion of the overall beer market, its popularity stands in stark contrast to overall sluggishness in beer sales, as the younger generation drinks less and cares more about its waistline. Beer giants like Heineken, Budweiser and Sam Adams have released nonalcoholic alternatives in the last five years.It’s not just for recovering alcoholics or nondrinkers. Shufelt said 80 percent of his customers drink alcohol, and three-fourths are between the ages of 21 and 44. About half are women, he added.THE SPEED READ DealsThe E.U.’s antitrust watchdog will deepen its scrutiny of Microsoft’s $75 billion takeover of Activision Blizzard. (WSJ)Goldman Sachs has reportedly weighed buying payment-technology companies to expand its credit-card business. (WSJ)The electric carmaker Lucid said it planned to raise up to $1.5 billion in fresh capital. (NYT)PolicyThe private equity giants Apollo, Carlyle and KKR disclosed inquiries by regulators over their dealmakers’ use of messaging apps like WhatsApp for business. (Bloomberg)Supreme Court justices are weighing a Pennsylvania law that requires companies to consent to being sued in its courts for conduct done anywhere. (NYT)Kenya published some details of a 2014 loan it took out from China, potentially straining relations with the country’s biggest source of infrastructure financing. (NYT)Best of the restVirginia Giuffre, a victim of Jeffrey Epstein, now says she may have misidentified the Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz as an abuser. (NYT)Twitter may now offer two kinds of check marks to verify users. (The Verge)Levi’s named Michelle Gass, Kohl’s chief executive, as its next C.E.O. (NYT)Would you take a Zoom meeting in a movie theater? AMC hopes so. (Insider)UBS’s chief risk officer, Christian Bluhm, is quitting to become … a professional photographer. (FT)Thanks for reading! We’ll see you tomorrow.We’d like your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More