Sega of America’s workers have voted to unionise, with staff at the company’s California headquarters citing a “lack of control over our own working conditions.”
Workers at the headquarters of Sega of America in Irvine, California, have voted to unionise, forming the first multi-departmental video game union in the United States. More than 140 people work at the office, which is responsible for game development, marketing, localisation, media streaming, marketing and quality assurance.
The new union will be named AEGIS, which stands for Allied Employees Guild Improving Sega, and it will be in partnership with the Communication Workers of America (CWA) union. It seems the move towards unionisation in the US video game industry is gathering pace.
In January, around 300 quality assurance workers at Zenimax – the company behind titles like Doom, Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, which was bought by Microsoft in 2020 – voted overwhelmingly to unionise. Groups within Activision Blizzard have also voted to form unions, including Blizzard Albany and Raven Software. Other studios are forming worker cooperatives in a bid for fairer wages and working hours.
In a statement, AEGIS said: “As employees at SEGA, our goal is to create high quality games and cross-media experiences for our wide, devoted fanbase. Our lack of control over our own working conditions has greatly hampered this goal. In the interest of delivering the best quality products to our fans, we must have the opportunity to make decisions that impact our working conditions.”
The statement goes on to note that: “nearly a third of SEGA’s long-time workers still lack full-time status, paid time off, proper training, or even bereavement leave, despite dedicating years of their lives to SEGA.”
AEGIS’s goals will include seeking higher base bay, improved benefits, opportunities for advancement, balanced workloads and adequate staffing.
