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Canadian Labour Institute
Topic
WORKING AS A BUILDING MANAGER IS NO DREAM JOB. The responsibilities are high, the pay is low, overtime is almost never paid. Complaining about any of it is a good way to get fired. And, worst of all, evicted.
But more and more building managers are complaining and often winning—like Lily.*
Lily works in property management in western Canada. She successfully won six months of overtime pay by taking her bully boss to the labour board. She told us: “I kept track of the hours and days I worked. Even when I was answering the phone at 11 p.m.”
Lily is not alone. She told us she knows of at least six other workers who have stood up to property management companies by taking them to the labour board to secure the overtime pay they’re entitled to.
How building management works
Large property management companies typically expect building managers to work 12-hour days, seven days a week, for an annual salary of just $17,000. They often offer it along with rent-free housing to sugar the bitter pill of long hours and low pay.
YOU CAN ALWAYS GET MORE LIVES. All video game players know that. Video game developers can’t. They’re stuck in the real world with just one life and it’s often a killer. So, often that many of them are working to form a union.
Life on the job for developers is a lot like factory work from the industrial era: suffering memory loss or being physically paralyzed from stress, with “The Boss” pushing, pushing, pushing till you feel your soul is pushed into the machine, or the screen.
But developers are beginning to push back with an effort to form a union.
The online road to unionization
The US video game industry is one of the nation’s fastest growing economic sectors, providing more than 220,000 jobs, with $36 billion in annual revenue. Hollywood is the next biggest entertainment sector. However, Hollywood has unions to represent and protect all the workers who make movies and has had these unions for decades. Game developers don’t.
A game developer who goes by Emma has been working behind the scenes to make the idea of unionizing a reality. Working alongside other developers, Emma has helped to create Game Workers Unite, an advocacy group for developers. “It’s really important to unionize because workers have literally no representation or rights when it comes to negotiating with their companies or negotiating with their employer,” said Emma.
“If you’re working in games, there’s a 99 percent chance you’re being exploited as a worker. We’re trying to start that conversation because it’s really taboo.” Emma won’t give her first name for fear of harassment and retaliation from her employer, but the group has been working on online zines and handing out fliers to support unionization.
Fear the ‘crunch’
Web development is a relatively new line of work but there is nothing new about how developers get treated at work. The pressure to produce is relentless. The hours are punishing. Rewards are few. Job security non-existant. It’s the way worklife was before unions.
Developers live with the fear of mass firings. Gaming studios typically hire numerous developers for a project, make them work like dogs, and then once the project is done, lay them all off. So not only do these studios burn the developers out, they dump them into limbo, crawling out of the office to find their next gig with little money and no time to recover.
Worse still is what the web development industry calls a “crunch”. A crunch is a time when developers go into production mode non-stop. They often have to work up to 20 hours a day and sometimes more than 100 hours a week with no time off. It all takes a heavy physical, psychological and emotional toll on game developers and designers.
Crunches have become a normal part of every developer’s work life. Marcin Iwinski thinks crunches are “pure evil.”
BOOK REVIEW
Topic
On the Line: A History of the British Columbia Labour Movement
Rod Mickleburgh
Harbour Publishing (2018)
B.C. IS UNION COUNTRY. ALWAYS WAS. ALWAYS WILL BE. And that’s a good thing. Rod Mickleburgh convincingly proves this in his new book On the Line.
PIXEL POWER skip Sat, 06/09/2018 - 11:35
Topic
YOU CAN ALWAYS GET MORE LIVES. All video game players know that. Video game developers can’t. They’re stuck in the real world with just one life and it’s often a killer. So often that many of them are working to form a union.
YOU CAN ALWAYS GET MORE LIVES. All video game players know that. Video game developers can’t. They’re stuck in the real world with just one life and it’s often a killer. So, often that many of them are working to form a union.
Life on the job for developers is a lot like factory work from the industrial era: suffering memory loss or being physically paralyzed from stress, with “The Boss” pushing, pushing, pushing till you feel your soul is pushed into the machine, or the screen.
But developers are beginning to push back with an effort to form a union.
The online road to unionization
The US video game industry is one of the nation’s fastest growing economic sectors, providing more than 220,000 jobs, with $36 billion in annual revenue. Hollywood is the next biggest entertainment sector. However, Hollywood has unions to represent and protect all the workers who make movies and has had these unions for decades. Game developers don’t.
A game developer who goes by Emma has been working behind the scenes to make the idea of unionizing a reality. Working alongside other developers, Emma has helped to create Game Workers Unite, an advocacy group for developers. “It’s really important to unionize because workers have literally no representation or rights when it comes to negotiating with their companies or negotiating with their employer,” said Emma.
“If you’re working in games, there’s a 99 percent chance you’re being exploited as a worker. We’re trying to start that conversation because it’s really taboo.” Emma won’t give her first name for fear of harassment and retaliation from her employer, but the group has been working on online zines and handing out fliers to support unionization.
Fear the ‘crunch’
Web development is a relatively new line of work but there is nothing new about how developers get treated at work. The pressure to produce is relentless. The hours are punishing. Rewards are few. Job security non-existant. It’s the way worklife was before unions.
POM POM POWER
Topic
Fired Saints cheerleader Bailey Davis and her ‘provocative’ photo
ALL BAILEY DAVIS WANTS IS A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD. So does Kristan Davis. They are suing the NFL to get it.
Both women were NFL cheerleaders. Both were fired. Both maintain they were victims of gender discrimination and denied basic worker’s rights due every worker, in every workplace.
Bailey Davis was fired when she dared to dress in a way the New Orleans Saints didn’t like. Kristan Davis was fired for daring to think out loud in a way the Miami Dolphins didn’t like.
MINIMUM REQUIRED
Topic
A $15 MINIMUM WAGE IS ALL THE RAGE—KINDA. A new CLI Briefing Note gives a clear snapshot of the different paths three provinces are taking to get there and suggests a $15 minimum wage for all may soon be “an idea whose time has come.”
Alberta will bring in a $15 minimum wage first in October, Ontario in January 2019—unless the new government come June 7 changes things—and B.C. in 2021.
UNIONS MATTER #7
Topic
LIKE YOUR TIME OFF? HUG A UNION.
Like your weekend? Thank the union movement.
Like your long weekend. Thank them even more.
Unions in Canada brought us the weekend, paid holidays and overtime.
Without unions we’d still be working seven days a week and forget about breaks.
Hug a union. They’ve worked for it.
SLAVE WAGES
Topic
Jainna Patel says her internship with Bell Mobility was no different from an entry-level job, plus overtime, except that she didn’t get a paycheque.
HER DAD TOLD HER THE INTERNSHIP WAS A SCAM. Jainna Patel said it wasn’t. Until the day she filed her complaint against Bell Mobility for scamming her to work for free.
