Microsoft recognizes 8video game unions[α] representing 2,000 video game workers. Microsoft like other tech companies, has historicallyresisted unions and relied ontemporary workers with lower pay and job security than regular employees. This shift began in 2015 and accelerated in 2022 when Microsoftacquired Activision Blizzard. To expedite the approval process, Microsoft signed a labor neutrality agreement withCommunications Workers of America. This agreement guarantees that Microsoft will notinterfere with or oppose union organizing efforts. It applies to both of its video game subsidiaries,Activision Blizzard andZeniMax Media. Other unionization efforts at TaxSaver Software andLionbridge have been unsuccessful.
Microsoft employees in the United States have been vocal in their opposition to military andICEgovernment contracts with Microsoft. Microsoft workers also showed transnational support for Chinese tech worker protesting the996.icu overtime culture.
Around the world, Microsoft and its subsidiaries have formed unions inCanada,Poland,Romania,South Korea andSweden and formedworks councils in Germany.Bethesda Game Studios unionized in Canada, andKing video game developers in Sweden voted to form a "union club".
Montreal studio ofBethesda Game Studios was certified on August 13, 2024, with support ofCommunications Workers of America Canada.[1] This follows therecent unionization of QA testers at ZeniMax, its parent company in the United States.[2]
Microsoft Germany has 2,700 employees and 6 offices across Germany as of 2014. Employees are represented by localworks councils and acentral works council since 1998.[3]
Microsoft Romania employees formed a union in early 2024. Almost a year later, in January 2025, Microsoft Romania signed acollective agreement with SLTC (Romanian:Sindicatul Liber din Telecomunicații), a trade union affiliate of ANTIC (Romanian:Alianta Sindicatelor din Tehnologia Informatiilor si Comunicatii). The collective agreement covers 1,500 workers.[4]
Microsoft recognizes 8 video game unions[α] representing 2,000[β] video game workers.[5][6] Microsoft like other tech companies, has historicallyresisted unions and relied ontemporary workers with lower pay and job security than regular employees. Microsoft changed course in 2014 with the appointment ofBrad Smith, Microsoft's newgeneral counsel. Smith, along with the new CEOSatya Nadella, took a more conciliatory approach to regulation, including labor rights. This took shape in 2015, when Microsoft instructed all large contractors to provide paid time off.[7]
When Microsoft announced its intention toacquire Activision Blizzard in a $70 billion deal in January 2022, there was a pragmatic risk thatCommunications Workers of America (CWA) would oppose the acquisition if Microsoft did not recognize ongoing unionization efforts at Activision. TheFTC raisedantitrust concerns about the deal, so Microsoft hoped a labor neutrality agreement with CWA would make the pro-laborBiden administration less likely to oppose the acquisition.
The labor neutrality agreement guarantees that Microsoft will notinterfere with or oppose union organizing efforts. The agreement originally intended to apply only toActivision Blizzard (pending its acquisition, which closed in October). After the acquisition was approved, the scope of the agreement was expanded to includeZeniMax Media, an existing Microsoft video game subsidiary.
Following the acquisition, Microsoft inherited two smaller video game unions from Activision Blizzard subsidiariesRaven Software andBlizzard Albany,[7] and has sincevoluntarily recognized 6 additional video game unions at bothZeniMax Studios andActivision Blizzard. Other unionization efforts at TaxSaver Software andLionbridge were unsuccessful.
A small group of 18 agency contractors at TaxSaver software declared itself the "negotiating unit" in April 1999 and becameunion-dues paying members ofWashington Alliance of Technology Workers, affiliated to CWA.[8]: 372–373
Underjoint employment law, theirbargaining unit would have to be recognized by both Microsoft and TaxSaver which neither did. Despite the formal lack of collective bargaining, the TaxSaver unit experienced wage increases. A year later, Microsoft switched toH&R Block, resulting in a loss of jobs for the TaxSaver unit.[8]: 372–373
38software testers who were contracted byLionbridge formed the union "Temporary Workers Alliance" union in 2014. Microsoft explicitly did not bargain with them, but they instructed Lionbridge to provide at least 3 weeks of vacation for all contractors.[9] In 2016, Lionbridge announced layoffs, two months after the union ratified its firstcollective agreement. As part of the negotiations, the union had agreed to drop ajoint employer lawsuit between them, Lionbridge and Microsoft.[10]
In May 2022,Quality Assurance (QA) testers of Activision Blizzard subsidiaryRaven Software went public as "Game Workers Alliance" (GWA) with the support ofCampaign to Organize Digital Employees-CWA.[11] GWA voted to unionize (19–2), which theNational Labor Relations Board certified afterwards.[12][13]
Following the Raven QA team's successful unionization, the 20-member QA team ofBlizzard Albany announced a unionization drive in July 2022 as GWA Albany.[14] The vote passed (14–0), forming the second union at an Activision Blizzard subsidiary.[15]
On March 8, 2024, 600 QA testers at 3Activision studios inAustin, Texas,Eden Prairie, Minnesota andEl Segundo, California formed the union "Activision Quality Assurance United-CWA" and voted to unionize (390–8) in favor, making it the largest video game union in the United States.[16][17]
In June 2024, anunfair labor practice was filed against Lionbridge by CWA alleging that the company illegally terminated the employment of 160 Activision software testers inBoise, Idaho, in retaliation for exercising their right to participate in concerted union activities. As part of the layoff, CWA also alleges that workers were required to sign an overly broadconfidentiality agreement and an illegal waiver of certain rights protected by theNational Labor Relations Act.[18]
On July 24, 2024, 500 artists, designers, engineers, producers, and quality assurance testers who work onWorld of Warcraft voted to unionize. This is the second "wall to wall" union (followingBethesda Game Studios) to represents all employees in a Microsoft bargaining unit, regardless of their job title.[5]
The same day, 60 QA testers at Blizzard's Austin office, who work on various games includingDiablo 4 andHearthstone, also voted to unionize and formed the union "Texas Blizzard QA United-CWA".[19]
300QA testers atZeniMax Online Studios voted to unionize as "ZeniMax Workers United-CWA" in January 2023. The QA testers review video games likeElder Scrolls Online. Among the issues they wish to improve are equitable pay, workplace communication and endingcrunch time.[20] ZeniMax QA testers at the Texas and Maryland studios initiated a one-day strike on November 13, 2024, in response to the shift fromremote-work to return-to-office policy and Microsoft's reliance onoutsourcing.[21] 461 other employees also involved with Elder Scrolls Online, including designers, engineers, graphics artists and developers also at ZeniMax Online Studios, unionized as "ZOS United-CWA" in December.[6]
241 US employees atBethesda Game Studios unionized as "OneBGS" on July 20, 2024. Its three studios are located inAustin/Dallas, Texas andRockville, Maryland.[22] The bargaining unit includes artists, developers, and engineers; unlike its parent companyZeniMax, which exclusively represented QA testers at the time.[23][24] The fourth studio inMontreal, Canada was certified in August, with the support ofCommunications Workers of America Canada. This marks the first instance of "wall to wall" unions within Microsoftbargaining units.[23]
Employees criticized Microsoft's bid of theJEDI cloud computing contracts in 2018. In February 2019, hundreds of Microsoft employees protested the company'swar profiteering from a $480 million contract to developvirtual reality headsets for theUnited States Army.[25]
100s of Microsoft employees protested their employers government contracts withU.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in June 2018.[26]
GitHub (subsidiary of Microsoft) had a $200,000 contract with ICE for the use of their on-site product GitHub Enterprise Server. This contract was renewed in 2019, despite internal opposition from many GitHub employees. In an email sent to employees, later posted to the GitHub blog on October 9, 2019, CEONat Friedman stated "The revenue from the purchase is less than $200,000 and not financially material for our company." He announced that GitHub had pledged to donate $500,000 to "nonprofit groups supporting immigrant communities targeted by thecurrent administration."[27] In response, at least 150 GitHub employees signed an open letter re-stating their opposition to the contract, and denouncing alleged human rights abuses by ICE. As of November 13, 2019, five workers had resigned over the contract.[28][29][30]
The ICE contract dispute came into focus again in June 2020 due to the company's decisionto abandon "master/slave" branch terminology, spurred by theGeorge Floyd protests andBlack Lives Matter movement.[31] Detractors of GitHub describe the branch renaming to be a form ofperformative activism and have urged GitHub to cancel their ICE contract instead.[32] An open letter from members of the open source community was shared on GitHub in December 2019, demanding that the company drop its contract with ICE and provide more transparency into how they conduct business and partnerships. The letter has been signed by more than 700 people.[33]
On March 26, 2019,Chinese tech workers launched a publicGitHub (owned by Microsoft) repository "996.ICU" protesting Chinese companies that have996 working hour culture. "996.ICU" references 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week, ending up in theintensive care unit. In less than a week, over 200,000 users "starred" or liked the repository.[34] This repository has been described as the largest display ofsolidarity among tech workers.[35] A month later, Microsoft employees launched another GitHub repository in support of 996.ICU, which they said was threatened bycensorship in China and asked Microsoft not to censor the original repository.[36]
Microsoft Workers Union (Polish:Związek Zawodowy Pracowników Microsoft) was registered on August 10, 2023 and is led by Tomasz Dydo.[37] As of 2024[update], an estimated 130 members have joined, representing a Microsoft's Polish workforce. Some of the issues the union wants to address arecrunch time, unused vacation days and better enforcement of local labor laws.[38]
In the Summer of 2017,[39] 370 workers of Microsoft Korea (half of the total workforce) formed Microsoft Korea Labor Union (Korean:한국마이크로소프트노동조합).[40][γ] It is led by Lee Ok-Hyoung, and is affiliated to theKorea Confederation of Trade Union.[42][δ] The union signed its firstcollective agreement in 2018, negotiation wages annually since.[43]
On November 24, 2021, 90% of the union membership voted to go onstrike overlong working hours and a 3.5% pay-raise offer that was rejected by the union membership,[40] instead demanding a 6.5% pay-raise. The strike authorization passed after 37 rounds of negotiations.[44]
King is a video-game subsidiary ofActivision Blizzard, headquartered inStockholm. King is best known for publishingCandy Crush. In October 2024, Stockholm employees voted to form a "union club" (Swedish:Fackklubb) withUnionen, a Swedish trade union. As of January 2025, they have 217 members and meet with management to negotiate for acollective agreement. The impetus for increased membership was due to the cancellation of a private company doctor.[45]
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