Hunches and gut feelings. Dreams in waking life.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 1st, 2023

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  • Posting it as a separate comment because I feel like the most important info is in there:

    Q:

    What are the reasons for your call for a strike?

    A:

    On September 17, management announced that it wanted to impose 3 days of face-to-face work per week. Many of us have organized our lives around work from home, allowing us to reconcile our professional and personal lives, reduce our travel, manage a disability or be a caregiver. This method has also compensated for the overload due to the non-replacement of colleagues.

    Despite this, no guarantee has been given regarding future negotiations, especially after the failure on profit-sharing, revealing a purely formal social dialogue and management focused on stock market indicators rather than employee commitment.

    We are therefore calling on Ubisoft employees to strike on Tuesday, October 15 in the afternoon to defend the following:

    • ⁠Work from home: preserving work-life balance and employment.
    • ⁠Salary: catching up with inflation and salary scale.
    • ⁠Social dialogue: real negotiations.
    • ⁠Profit-sharing: a 13th month as compensation.

  • Q:

    Is there a way/effort to enlist colleagues from other countries? Or does the legal framework elsewhere make such action too risky?

    A:

    We represent French employees. But there are efforts being made in other countries to unionize. However, this is not our responsibility and we prefer not to go into this subject.

    Q:

    What was your position on the death of The Crew 1 video game, and the vague statements of the guy who said “players are going to have to get used to not owning their games anymore”? Were there any attempts to prevent the servers from being disconnected (which eventually happened)? In any case, it caused such a stir that Ivory Tower recently said they were going to implement an offline mode for The Crew 2 and Motorfest.

    A:

    We, who are also gamers, see, like you, that the pressure from the financial markets leads to decisions that do not serve the interests of players.


  • Q:

    Isn’t the return to on-site work just a disguised layoff plan, which would fit in with the wave of massive layoffs that the sector has been experiencing for some time? A little off topic: There are rumors of a buyout by Tencent (or at least a significant increase in their stake in Ubi’s capital), how do you feel about it internally?

    A:

    Decisions concerning the structuring of shareholding at Ubisoft are completely beyond the control of employees. We have no information on this subject.

    Q:

    How are the rumors of a buyout by Tencent perceived internally? Is the atmosphere the same as during the rumors of Vivendi’s purchases a few years ago?

    Given the recent critical success of the latest Prince of Persia (I don’t know if the game was profitable though), isn’t this a sign for Ubisoft’s management to trust its internal talents more to make more original games rather than wanting to jump on any trend (nft, service games, etc.) even if it means alienating certain developers and consumers?

    A:

    Employees follow the media on the buyout rumors, which worries them. Employees and ourselves are attached to the collective work of Ubisoft, which is a flagship of the French video game industry. We work to defend employment and our working conditions.

    What is new within Ubisoft is the union fact, which gives employees a voice and concrete action to defend their rights.


  • Q:

    Even if your goal is to protect employees and their jobs, don’t you think that there are too many people in some sectors of IT today? With covid and the world having switched to teleworking for 2 years, the number of jobs in tech has exploded, and companies have recruited en masse. Except that today demand is collapsing, and is facing a void, since the strong demand at the time of covid has now been satisfied. Meanwhile, shareholders are still on their cloud of illusions of permanent and infinite growth and are always asking for more.

    In short, we know very well who is at fault in this mess, but don’t you think that a reduction in certain jobs in tech is necessary?

    A:

    We are indeed very attached to job protection. During the COVID period, profits exploded and this is particularly true for video games, investors expected to have the same level of growth. This period has ended, and some of the investments from this period have not been absorbed by the market. This is part of the vagaries of investments. The video game market is still growing despite everything and is actually doing quite well.

    We don’t see why we should get rid of tech employees.