LA Game Workers Join Our Union Siblings at Labor Notes
March 11th 2023 — Video game workers joined 400 of our union siblings at a Los Angeles “Troublemakers School.” The event was organized by Labor Notes, the legendary publisher and worker center at the cutting edge of the labor movement. If you want to meet other radical unionists, you go to Labor Notes.
Many of the nine attending game workers hailed from my own Game Workers of Southern California (GWSC), a local grassroots volunteer organization. And two of us — Dara Insixiengmay and Robin LoBuglio (yours truly) came representing the Tender Claws Human Union (TCHU-CWA), currently the only certified union in LA that represents game development workers.
We were joined by many of our friends and allies in the labor movement — Stripper Strike NoHo workers had a healthy presence, as did Animation Guild members and other IATSE workers.
The game workers at Labor Notes weren’t passive participants: many of us served on the event organizing committee, and we appeared in three sessions throughout the day. If you couldn’t make it, here’s the recap!
Panel 1: “Remote Organizing: What Works, and What Doesn’t”
First thing in the morning, workers from GWSC organized a panel about the ins and outs of organizing over digital communication platforms. In-person conversations have traditionally held a sacred status in labor organizing techniques, but when the COVID pandemic hit and many of us went remote, labor had to adapt.
GWSC’s Brian Hill facilitated, Kelsey Rose served on the panel, and Julie Lieu contributed to the curriculum. They were joined by two Animation Guild (IATSE local 839) members — Claire Norris of Nickelodeon Animation, and an organizer from titmouse Los Angeles. Each brought extensive remote organizing experience from campaigns unionizing production staff.
Remote organizing is a complicated subject, and the panelists covered a lot of ground. Here are a few of the questions they asked, and answered:
- How do you build the friendships and bonds required for a strong organizing campaign when you can’t meet face to face?
- How do you reach out to initial organizing contacts when there is no natural opportunity to begin the conversation?
- What skills & practices carry over from in-person to remote organizing?
- How do organizing practices like workplace mapping and delegating work to members differ in remote organizing?
- What is the role of group chat programs and social events in organizing — both during the underground phase, and after going public?
- All in all, what are the advantages and difficulties of remote organizing?
Panel 2: “New Organizing”
Labor Notes’ bread and butter is reinvigorating existing unions. But labor needs to gain ground too, and workers on the New Organizing panel told their stories of running fresh campaigns at their workplaces.
Jamie Bulaich of the International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU local 63) organized the panel. Joining her as panelists were Melo Hailey, an ILWU 63 member who successfully unionized her workplace, and Sara Fee, an Inland Empire Amazon Workers Union (IE AWU) member who’s helped organize multiple walkouts at her warehouse. Rounding it out were game workers Dara Insixiengmay and Robin LoBuglio, who unionized our company Tender Claws last July with CWA local 9003.
We hailed from vastly different workplaces and different stages of unionization — Melo spoke to the process from start to end, from building an organizing committee to winning their first contract. Dara and I talked about organizing in a non-union industry — ours was only the third-ever US union for video game developers to be recognized. And Sara described IE AWU’s action-packed campaign of multiple direct actions, as they fight union busting and build a majority at a huge workplace.
Despite our varied circumstances, the New Organizing panelists had a lot in common. We’ve all painstakingly built relationships with our co-workers, and made ride-or-die friends in the process. We’ve all dealt with tense situations with management. And we’ve all experienced the greatest gift the labor movement has to offer — the transformation from an isolated bystander, to an empowered member of a community.
Panel 3: “Fighting the Threat of AI and Automation”
There’s been a lot of noise about rapid advances in AI software, and the threat it poses to jobs once thought impossible to automate. In response to this uncertainty, my colleague and I from GWSC organized a levelheaded discussion of what the threat is and how we can fight back.
The best way to defang the unknown is to ground it in the familiar. Labor is no stranger to the fight against automation-driven job loss — so we turned to Rich Dines and David Ross Jr. from the ILWU, a union that’s been fighting automation at the ports since before the internet existed — let alone AI. They shared their experience fighting back, from contract negotiations to crafting public policy.
On the other end of things, tech worker and AI expert Cher Scarlett — who co-founded the #AppleToo movement — discussed the surveillance capabilities of AI. She taught the class about “Re-identification,” a process by which AI software analyzes a set of anonymous data (such as a workplace salary spreadsheet) and attempts to discover the identities of the humans involved. She also discussed how organizers can better hide their tracks, and in some cases even use AI technology against our bosses.
It was a powerful synergy to combine AI experts and veterans of traditional automation fights. But what truly made the panel special was our audience participation. A rail worker discussed automatic train-driving software that threatens public safety and union jobs. Rideshare drivers talked about their struggle with a capricious and opaque AI “manager” that evaluates their performance. The standing-room-only audience also included ILWU members, teachers, academics, animators, and more — the type of spread that you can only find at Labor Notes.
We were told a lot of nice comments about the panel, but my favorite was one I overheard in the hall — “I feel less scared now.”
What We Take Home
We game worker-organizers are driven by the promise of a better life for ourselves and our colleagues. But we also have another goal: to bolster the global labor movement, and help all working people stand up to tyrannical bosses and corrupt politicians.
When rumbles of unionization began in tech and games, some cynically claimed that these white collar workers had no place in the labor movement. The Labor Notes LA Troublemakers School proved them dead wrong — our union siblings have welcomed us with open arms, and we’ve even been able to repay that generosity with donated time and work.
The workplace challenges we face are different from those of train operators, teachers, and logistics workers, but we are all still union siblings — and share far more in common with each other than we do with our bosses.
Labor Notes organizer Courtney Smith closed the event with an electrifying call-and-response poem. Attendees’ eyes had been beginning to droop from the long day, but after the first few verses we were riled up and excited to get back to organizing. To keep that energy going, I have reprinted the poem here:
My love language is solidarity
It speaks to me in languages of struggle, freedom and fight
It Calls me comrade
And I rejoice
It tells me that it’s not my fault
Living in an extremely hostile environment
That’s punishing me
For just wanting to exist
For just Wanting to breathe
How many times do we have to say
“I….
can’t…
breathe”
Until you get the boot off my neck
Get the boot off my fuckin neck
Instead they gave me bootstraps
Told me
“DONT KNEEL
STAND UP
GET IN LINE
LEAN IN
You aren’t even worth half of what you produce
But get to WORK”
All we asked was for some bread and maybe roses too
My love language is solidarity
It speaks to me in languages of struggle, freedom and fight
It calls me comrade
And I rejoice
It trades in white guilt
For solidarity
It trades in ally ship
And puts us all in the trenches
It says “Black Lives Matter” until we make material conditions matter
It stops boasting about how high black life can ascend
and starts demanding to raise the floor
Raise the fuckin FLOOR…..
Do you know what happens to the psyche of a person
constantly negotiating with poverty
Do you know what happens with two groups of people
who want to make inconsistent types of worlds
Force is the only remedy
We tried to negotiate
Power concedes nothing without a demand
So we demanded a seat at the table
Even if we couldn’t afford to eat
They had no idea how hungry we were
So they told us…
“Let them eat cake”
But we ate the rich instead
My love language is solidarity
It speaks to me in languages of struggle freedom and fight
It calls me comrade
And I rejoice
It let‘s me know that I am seen
For all my humanness
That I am worth more than just my productivity
I can just be
I am not alone
I am with YOU
and I’m fighting for your right to exist
To breathe
To have bread
And fuckin roses too
Until next time,
Struggle, freedom, and fight!
