Rockstar has been accused of union busting, but the company says the fired employees were "distributing and discussing confidential information in a public forum"
That was really clumsy on the side of the workers. Discord is the last App I would use to organize a union. What were they even thinking?
On the other hand that probably means they use discord for literally everything including communication within Rockstar, albeit unofficially. So yeah if their employer had any consistency in firing people over NDAs they would probably have to fire most of the staff.
Official internal chat will be either Slack or MS Teams. Using any unauthorised app to discuss matters relating to the business would be a contract violation.
Realistically, game devs do this all the time in private chats with colleagues that happen outside work, both online and in person. But of course R* either never knows about those or chooses to overlook it.
In this case, I suspect the fact they were unionising was the reason they actually took action on it. It’s not about consistency, it’s about having an excuse to fire these people.
I’ve formed a union within the industry. The trick is a balance between meeting with workers and security for the OC. In my campaign, we used discord as well to be a space to connect with as many people as possible outside of work. We also used signal for the OC to discuss the actual organizing. NDAs are limited only to the direct work. You can legally talk about workplace issues though. IWGB (UK equivalent to CODE-CWA) aren’t amateurs, they very likely trained the OC on all of this.
That was really clumsy on the side of the workers. Discord is the last App I would use to organize a union. What were they even thinking?
On the other hand that probably means they use discord for literally everything including communication within Rockstar, albeit unofficially. So yeah if their employer had any consistency in firing people over NDAs they would probably have to fire most of the staff.
Official internal chat will be either Slack or MS Teams. Using any unauthorised app to discuss matters relating to the business would be a contract violation.
Realistically, game devs do this all the time in private chats with colleagues that happen outside work, both online and in person. But of course R* either never knows about those or chooses to overlook it.
In this case, I suspect the fact they were unionising was the reason they actually took action on it. It’s not about consistency, it’s about having an excuse to fire these people.
If you are organizing a union NEVER EVER use company controlled channels to communicate about it. This is organizing 101.
At the same time, make sure that whatever you do use is private and secure. Union reps will warn you about how companies spy, and it is not paranoia.
I’ve formed a union within the industry. The trick is a balance between meeting with workers and security for the OC. In my campaign, we used discord as well to be a space to connect with as many people as possible outside of work. We also used signal for the OC to discuss the actual organizing. NDAs are limited only to the direct work. You can legally talk about workplace issues though. IWGB (UK equivalent to CODE-CWA) aren’t amateurs, they very likely trained the OC on all of this.
What does OC mean in this context?
The Organizing Committee. They do all the actual organizing and agitating.