Demands from workers at Spiders and support for the social movement at Kylotonn

We are relaying this statement from workers at Spiders

Spiders studio is in a situation similar to that of Kylotonn (Kt-Racing): reduced to the role of a subsidiary that dare not speak its name. In practice, it cannot choose the orientation of its productions without the approval of the group, which holds all intellectual property on them, and is subjugated by Nacon’s management, which defines financing terms that give it total power, usually in the form of monthly payments.

At Spiders too, management regularly uses this situation to cut short demands for transparency and negotiation by hiding behind « negotiations between the studio and Nacon » from which workers and their representatives are conveniently excluded.

For more than a year, basic demands to comply with the law, respect social dialogue, be transparent and negotiate collective agreements have remained ignored or blocked by management.

These legitimate demands do however seek to respond to vital issues such as the organisation of remote work, formalisation of production organisation and internal alert processes, transparency on assessment processes, recruitment problems, etc.

The workers at Spiders express their solidarity with those at Kylotonn, who were on strike on July 11 and are on strike again today, and support their social movement. Since we are all in the same boat, our fates are closely linked. We’ll be keeping a close eye on any new developments at our two studios and will take action if necessary.

Following their example, we are also making our demands public. Unsurprisingly, they are similar to the demands made by Kylotonn workers. Our demands to the managements of Spiders and Nacon are as follows:

1. Begin, before 2024, the negotiations that have been requested for months by workers’ representatives:
   1. Agreement on remote work
   2. Pay scales
   3. Creation of an internal warning and reporting system
   4. Introduction of an anonymous performance evaluation system enabling managers to be evaluated by their teams
   5. Mandatory annual negotiations, never held despite legal requirements
   6. Standardised process for adapting working conditions
2. Automatic notification and consultation of the workers’ council on matters covered by their responsibilities, as required by law
3. Transparency on strategies and decisions for recruiting and retaining employees within the studio, to put an end to unequal treatment and recruitment problems that plague productions;
4. Consultation of all workers during initial game pitches, pre-production and mid-way through production regarding the creative aspects of the games we make
5. Full and complete transparency on negotiations between Nacon and its subsidiaries, on raises and structural decisions for the group and its studios, through the inclusion of a delegation of workers’ representatives from the group’s studios
6. Bringing minimum salaries in all of Nacon’s entities into line with the highest ones in the group