Sega of America Workers to Form Union with Communication Workers of America

Work­ers at Sega of Amer­i­ca’s head­quar­ters in Irvine, Cal­i­for­nia, have announced their plans to form a union with the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers of Amer­i­ca and call them­selves “Allied Employ­ees Guild Improv­ing Sega” (AEGIS-CWA).

The pro­posed union, though not the largest in the indus­try, will encom­pass 144 work­ers from Sega of Amer­i­ca’s local­iza­tion, mar­ket­ing, prod­uct devel­op­ment, game-as-a-ser­vice, and qual­i­ty con­trol teams.

The move to union­ize comes as the work­ers hope to have a say in the deci­sions that deter­mine their work­ing con­di­tions, job secu­ri­ty, and over­all wel­fare. They want to ensure that their pas­sion for work­ing at Sega can be trans­formed into a long-term and sus­tain­able career.

The union has applied to the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board for the elec­tion of union rep­re­sen­ta­tives. While they hope Sega will vol­un­tar­i­ly endorse AEGIS-CWA, they are pre­pared to take nec­es­sary mea­sures to ensure their voic­es are heard.

This announce­ment makes Sega of Amer­i­ca’s work­ers the lat­est group of indus­try work­ers to form a union, fol­low­ing the foot­steps of Vodeo Games and sev­er­al Activi­sion Bliz­zard groups. Microsoft cur­rent­ly has the largest union in the video game indus­try, with Zen­i­Max Work­ers Unit­ed CWA rep­re­sent­ing around 300 employees.