Despite alarmist statements from employers, the video game industry continues to grow and companies continue to rake in profits. But that money isn’t going into the pockets of workers who are losing their jobs at breakneck speed, while their bosses sleep peacefully, not fearing for their pay. It’s about time they started answering for themselves.
Companies are full of qualified workers fully capable of managing their own production and taking the decisions that will guarantee the survival of their jobs. The only thing standing in their way is their bosses, who have become masters in the arts of turning a deaf ear, lying and blocking teams through their incompetence.
Faced with the only opposition they have, workers‘ councils and trade unions, who are calling attention to the companies’ management problems and the suffering these are causing workers, executives just brush them aside. The notices and recommendations of staff representatives, alerts, open letters, strikes… run up against the wall of the bosses’ social monologue.
As history proves these warnings from workers to be right everywhere, these overpaid executives continue to stick their heads in the sand. The layoffs announced at Don’t Nod this autumn are only the result of a management that has repeatedly refused to listen to workers, to take responsibility and to act accordingly.
We must fight against layoffs
The ongoing bloodshed is not limited to video games: the CGT recently counted hundreds of planned layoffs, threatening hundreds of thousands of jobs in France. It’s not up to the workers to pay for the foolishness of their bosses, neither in the video game industry nor anywhere else.
The CGT has also initiated a national day of action on December 12 against the waves of redundancies affecting all sectors. The STJV is joining this mobilisation and calls on all workers in the video game industry to strike on Thursday December 12 to demand a halt to all current and future layoffs, respect for social dialogue and workers’ control over production.
This date coincides with a new day of strike action by the workers at Don’t Nod, who are actively fighting to save their company. Let’s take advantage of the day of action on December 12 to support them, particularly on their picket line in Paris: if today it’s them who are threatened, tomorrow it will be the whole industry.
This call covers the STJV’s field of action in the private sector, and therefore applies to any person employed by a video game publishing, distribution, services and/or creation company, whatever their position or status and whatever their company’s area of activity (games, consoles, mobile, serious games, VR/AR, game engines, marketing services, streaming, derivative products, esports, online content creation, etc.), as well as to all teachers working in private schools in video game-related courses. As this is a national strike call, no action is necessary to go on strike: just don’t come to work.