An anonymous employee of Nintendo filed a complaint against the company and one of its employee intermediaries with the National Labor Relations Board.
The complaint, first discovered by Axios, was filed in Washington State on April 15 against Nintendo, headquartered in Redmond, Washington., And Aston Carter, a personnel / recruitment company with offices in Bellevue, Washington.
These allegations include coercive statements, coercive actions, dismissal and coordinated activities. Without a request through the freedom of Information Act, the public is currently unable to obtain more details about the complaint.
Aston Carter is one of several human resources agencies Nintendo has hired to fill its Redmond regional office. Although the company currently has no Nintendo related positions on its website, cached Google results show that Aston Carter is specifically involved in Nintendo customer service and call center recruitment.
Geekwire has contacted Nintendo for comment.
According to the information currently available, it is difficult to say what the details of the complaint are. Analysts see between the lines that this may indicate that the complainants are trying to organize their colleagues.
This will be in line with the recent trend of the whole video game industry. Attempts to unionize game workers have been slow for at least the past four years, as many modern “AAA” game developers lack temporary work, consulting, hiring and dismissal cycles, and underpaid / overworked quality assurance (read: bug testing) workers.
In January, when the Wisconsin based studio Raven software (que: word: walzea) announced its intention to unionize the QA department, the company announced that it would unionize in response to the scandal of crow owner actuvb Blizzard and a series of disappointing layoffs at the end of 2021. As far as Activision Blizzard is concerned, it is doing its best to disintegrate the alliance in a passive and radical way, but it has not officially recognized this.
QA is often one of the most important but least respected jobs in the game industry. Raven’s current plight under Activision Blizzard is likely to ignite some fuses in other companies, including Nintendo.