Activision Blizzard workers walk out, protesting loss of abortion rights
Last edited Thu Jul 21, 2022, 02:12 PM - Edit history (1)
Source: Washington Post
by Shannon Liao
Hundreds of Activision Blizzard employees are walking out Thursday in Texas, California, Minnesota and New York to protest the overturn of Roe v. Wade and demand protections. The current count, as of this writing, is 450 employees, in-person and online.
The demands include a request for all workers to have the right to work remotely, and for workers living in “locations passing discriminatory legislation,” such as antiabortion laws, to be offered relocation assistance to a different state or country. Employees are also demanding the company sign a labor-neutrality agreement to respect the rights of workers to join a union; on Twitter, the workers’ group A Better ABK said the demand was necessitated by union-busting efforts on the part of Activision Blizzard.
“We need to make sure that all of our LGBT people, all of the people at ABK [Activision Blizzard King] with the capacity for pregnancy, all of the women at the company feel safe and protected and that they have the ability to live in places that aren’t going to actively harm them,” said Valentine Powell, a California-based senior engineer on “World of Warcraft.”
Some of the protests will take place in Texas, specifically, where Activision has offices and remote workers and where abortion was already heavily restricted. Several dozen workers gathered on Thursday in Austin, Texas to hold up signs that read, “Gender Equity Now,” and “Honk if you support workers’ rights!”
(Washington Post illustration; Activision Blizzard; iStock)
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/07/21/activision-blizzard-roe-walkout/
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RESPECT
