The video game industry's first direct-join union has grown to roughly 445 members since its launch, amidst industry-wide job losses and an escalating federal crackdown on workers' rights. The United Videogame Workers union, which launched with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), was announced March 19 at the Game Developers Conference. It's an effort on behalf of developers and the CWA to champion unionization efforts without relying on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a federal agency that protects worker's rights and working conditions. Their first campaign will focus on industry-wide layoffs; a GDC report released in January found that 11 percent of developers surveyed said they'd been laid off in the year prior. The move comes at a time when the Trump administration has been hostile toward unions, issuing an executive order to end collective bargaining obligations with some federal agencies and firing an NLRB employee, crippling the agency.

Google announced Friday that it is releasing a course aimed at teaching one million Americans how to use artificial intelligence tools. As part of the rollout, the tech giant also announced that its charitable arm, Google.org, The new AI skills course will be available for 49 on Coursera, a for-profit online course provider. The announcement comes after Google scrapped its rules requiring suppliers and staffing firms it works with to provide good pay and benefits to their employees - along with laying off thousands of employees despite turning record profits. Google announced two new initiatives: One is a self-paced course on AI skills, the other is a grant program for AI job skills training.

Hollywood's striking Writers Guild of America (WGA) and SAG-AFTRA actors' union have filed a grievance with the United States's National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against Comcast's NBCUniversal, accusing the company of blocking a picket area. The unions said on Tuesday that NBCUniversal infringed its freedom to picket and endangered its members by obstructing a public sidewalk next to the company's studio lot in California with an ongoing construction project. The WGA's complaint said NBCUniversal "forced picketers to patrol in busy streets with significant car traffic where two picketers have already been struck by a car". SAG-AFTRA said members had been forced "to picket at the unsafe crowded location, exacerbating the dire public safety situation to interfere with striking members' right to engage in the protected, concerted activity of picketing and patrolling outside the employer's premises during a lawful strike". Hollywood actors joined film and television writers on picket lines for the first time in 63 years last week as they demanded higher streaming-era pay and curbs on the use of artificial intelligence.

More than 280 workers at TCGplayer, a marketplace for trading card games like Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon, are trying to unionize. A supermajority of the workers have filed for a union representation election with the National Labor Relations Board. If their efforts are successful, they'll form the first union at eBay, which bought TCGplayer in 2022 in a deal worth up to $295 million. Employees of several card and tabletop companies have unionized, including Card Kingdom, Bellevue Mox Boarding House, Noble Knight Games and Paizo. The TCGplayer workers are similarly trying to organize with the Communications Workers of America ( CWA), which has also worked with several video game studios in their unionization attempts.

The games industry has seen a wave of unionization efforts in recent years. Workers at Activision Blizzard were some of the first to unionize in North America. Testers at Call of Duty maker Raven Software won their bid to unionize last May and are currently bargaining for a contract. In December, a group of about 20 testers at Blizzard Albany joined the Game Workers Alliance. Quality assurance testers are some of the lowest-paid workers at these studios, which helped their arguments in front of the National Labor Relations Board that they should form their own bargaining units.

Raven Software helps develop the popular Call of Duty franchise for Activision Blizzard. Recently, workers there staged a weeks-long walkout to protest layoffs. Raven Software helps develop the popular Call of Duty franchise for Activision Blizzard. Recently, workers there staged a weeks-long walkout to protest layoffs. Go back to LiveJournal (LiveJournal!), and read one of the earliest and most infamous accounts of working conditions at a large video game company -- a 2004 post written by the spouse of an Electronic Arts (EA) employee -- and you'll find in the comments a healthy debate about whether or not a union would work at a video game company.