OK, I really think that this idea is going to backfire, but the polygon article is interesting.

https://www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/23447955/tabletop-magic-the-gathering-cards-union-cwa?fbclid=IwAR3Hs-6tG_ZcWqkt97JL1lx_r4z5lkQZSSrmQTQYYCz_IwilNrcYvF5Wv84

Quote from: polygon articleTabletop, card game retailers join the game industry's burgeoning union push
In Wisconsin and Washington, tabletop workers are unionizing

By Nicole Carpenter@sweetpotatoes  Nov 9, 2022, 3:45pm EST 

The push to unionize workers in the games industry mirrors the momentum of the modern labor movement as a whole. The number of union election petitions is up in 2022, with more workers filing with the National Labor Relations Board to organize their workplaces. And it's not just making headlines; the data supports the surge, too. Between October 2021 and September this year, 2,510 petitions were filed for union representation, according to the NLRB, representing a 53% increase from last fiscal year. And the moment isn't just about digital shops. The urge to unionize is spilling over into the tabletop industry as well.

Cards Against Humanity workers at the studio of the same name won the right to form a union in 2020, and workers at Pathfinder publisher Paizo followed soon after. The tabletop and card games industry is expanding into retailers and warehouses at companies like Card Kingdom, Mox Boarding House, and Noble Knight Games.

"The gaming industry is kind of a dangerous industry in that it's work of passion," Devin Zebertavage, Noble Knight Games digital media specialist, told Polygon. "We do it because we love it. And it's that perfect storm for any employer who wants to take advantage of their workforce."

A second Noble Knight Games employee, who asked to speak anonymously, continued: "The tabletop industry is exciting, and it's fun. I think employers count on that when they offer us wages that aren't in line with the responsibilities that we're being asked to have. We love our company. We love the industry. That's why we're [here]. We just think that our expertise and our talent deserves better wages, better benefits, and a better working environment."

Workers at Noble Knight Games, an online board and tabletop game retailer located in Wisconsin, are the latest to file for a union vote with the NLRB. In addition to better pay and environment, workers told Polygon that sick days aren't a thing at Noble Knight. "It'd be nice to get some of those," Zebertavage said. "Our PTO is already pretty scant."


The group, called Noble Knight Games United, filed its petition on Oct. 31 after "years" of prep work, looking to cover an estimated 70 employees who support a physical and online retail store, offices, and warehouse. Zebertavage said talk of a union has been ongoing for years, but Communications Workers of America got involved in May. CWA, for its part, has been a major driving force at video game union shops and has been pushing into tabletop and card gaming, too — unifying digital and tabletop gaming in the shared labor struggle.

Noble Knight leadership denied the union's request for voluntary recognition despite its 70% support among workers. In the days since that request, Noble Knight has hired a "union avoidance" law firm called National Labor Relations Advocates. The lawyer hired lists his services as helping companies "besieged by union threats and harassment stand up and fight back." On its blog, the firm provides tips to "maintain control" of a business, referring to unionization as an "attack." Another blog post considers whether union organizing or COVID-19 is the bigger threat to companies, calling COVID-19 a "temporary pain" while union organizing is a "long-term pain." Noble Knight Games workers consider this move, hiring National Labor Relations Advocates, a union-busting attempt.


Polygon has reached out to Noble Knight for comment.

Elsewhere in the tabletop industry, Card Kingdom workers, in a group of more than 100 employees spanning a variety of warehouse and grading roles, filed their union petition in May with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local 3000; they won their union election in July. Card Kingdom, based in Washington state, focuses mainly on Magic: The Gathering cards — a collectible that increased dramatically in value during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic. In its petition, Card Kingdom workers said revenue hit a peak over the past two years without a bump in wages or benefits, on top of stressful workplace conditions, a lack of safety regulations, and cases of repetitive strain injuries.

Workers were also frustrated at big changes made without input of the people most impacted, like adjusted benefits.

"Card Kingdom [moved to] drop COVID protections, to changing our insurance without warning, or reaching out to us for input about any of these sweeping changes that could affect our lives and safety," Card Kingdom production associate Raevyn Fletcher told Polygon. "Prior to starting at Card Kingdom I was on a waitlist working towards gender affirming care. I was excited to find Card Kingdoms insurance was the same as what I had prior and I would not have to alter my plans, right after I was able to get the health insurance Card Kingdom changed our provider, this I was assured should not set me back things would be fine. Nearly a year later I am working to make up for lost ground after this switch. My story echoes those of other coworkers."

In June, retail and service workers at Card Kingdom's retail store and restaurant, Mox Boarding House in Bellevue, Washington, filed a petition to cover nearly 40 employees — also with CWA. In this petition, workers alleged the company has "poor retention of staff" due to low pay and unfair management practices. They're looking for representation to "protect both ourselves and those who come after us," workers wrote. Like Card Kingdom workers, the Bellevue Mox Organized Workers won their union vote this year.

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Workers at Paizo unionize, a first for the tabletop role-playing game industry
Card Kingdom management told Polygon that it's "welcomed" unions at both its Card Kingdom and Mox Boarding House, Bellevue locations; Card Kingdom is in negotiations now, while Mox Boarding House will enter bargaining soon after winning the vote on Aug. 30.

Mox Boarding House is unique because it spans a wide variety of roles — it's a restaurant with a full kitchen, a board game cafe, and a retail store. It's a huge space, with hundreds of board games to play and rent out, plus the shop and its Magic: The Gathering sales business. Cade Herrig, a retail sales associate at Mox, said employees got together and started talking about wages: "Most of us don't make enough to cover rent by ourselves," they said. "Most of us don't get paid enough to make ends meet without having multiple roommates or second jobs or other income streams. It was a very basic mathematical question — we need to be getting more out of this to stay here comfortably."




Herrig stressed that a lot of the staff wants to stay there, and to be able to stay there. People like working there.

"Gaming, tabletop, board games [...] it's an industry of passion," Herrig said. "You see this on the video game side, too, with the instability in career choices and layoffs. Unionization is an incredibly important step towards protecting people and allowing them to work on their passions and work on what they deeply care about while still being able to make ends meet and put food on the table at the end of the day."

Tabletop and card gaming workers are unionizing for the same reasons anyone else is — "better pay and working conditions, benefits, and having a collective voice on the job that meets with management as an equal," UFCW 3000 communications director Anna Minard told Polygon. The push forward toward a unionized game industry, which includes tabletop and card gaming workers, is an important way to ensure so-called passion industry workers get "a powerful voice in the workplace so they can earn the compensation and respect everyone should get in exchange for their labor," she said.

What do they unionize for? Aren't most of them freelancers? Just seems like another reason for the OSR to succeed over the corporate competition.

Unionization only makes sense in an environment where the profit margin of the company is large enough to absorb the increased expenses without knocking the company's operations below viability. Most restaurants don't meet that criterion; I would be exceedingly surprised to learn of any game company which does.

This guy does have a bit of a point:

"The gaming industry is kind of a dangerous industry in that it's work of passion," Devin Zebertavage, Noble Knight Games digital media specialist, told Polygon. "We do it because we love it. And it's that perfect storm for any employer who wants to take advantage of their workforce."

Baizuo was notorious for this. So was TSR.

By all accounts WotC is just as bad, but they have been getting away with it - because D&D.

The Noble Knight people were correct to hire a "union avoidance" law firm, because unionization in this day and age absolutely is an attack on your business.

That being said, the Noble Knight people should have exercised a bit more Noblesse Oblige in the past, and avoided this whole mess altogether...

Unionising only really works for workers who produce things people can't do without - electricity, transport and so on. So if they go on strike then it inconveniences the public enough they and the government put pressure on the company to give in.

Unionising doesn't work as well for workers who produce luxuries, like restaurant food, movies and roleplaying games. If they go on strike people mostly shrug and get on with their lives.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on November 10, 2022, 10:48:34 PM
Unionising only really works for workers who produce things people can't do without - electricity, transport and so on. So if they go on strike then it inconveniences the public enough they and the government put pressure on the company to give in.

Unionising doesn't work as well for workers who produce luxuries, like restaurant food, movies and roleplaying games. If they go on strike people mostly shrug and get on with their lives.

Unions also help shield employees from certain types of liability. When I worked for Sikorsky Aircraft back in 2001, some guy left a tool within the airframe and the craft got shipped out. Eventually it rattled loose, damaged some wires, and nearly got some soldiers killed overseas somewhere. Company found out who was responsible from work logs, but the union stepped in and kept his job. Thinking about it now, that's pretty fukken bonkers!

Anyway, unions also drive up costs. The employees are going to demand higher wages to cover the union dues, and that expense is passed on to the customer. If I didn't suspect WotC was already planning to transition to a purely digital product, this will certainly encourage the shift. Books are already expensive as hell, I don't think too many people will be willing to spend more than they are now.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on November 10, 2022, 06:26:08 PM
Unionization only makes sense in an environment where the profit margin of the company is large enough to absorb the increased expenses without knocking the company's operations below viability. Most restaurants don't meet that criterion; I would be exceedingly surprised to learn of any game company which does.

The last union I was in took 10% of every check and then stood back and did nothing as people were worked to death. So every time someone says Union I reach for a weapon.

Quote from: Omega on November 11, 2022, 03:01:02 AM
The last union I was in took 10% of every check and then stood back and did nothing as people were worked to death. So every time someone says Union I reach for a weapon.

Union dues are typically 1-2%; what industry was this?!

If I were back in the US, my industry is unionising, and I'd be joining - not so much for improved pay as for protection from bad management. Since I'm working in the UK now, worker protections are better, and that factor is far less of a priority. Plus pay is lower & cost of living is higher, but a union isn't likely to have much luck raising my pay, so it seems like a luxury.

It seems to me there's a bit of contradiction between "restaurant food is a luxury" and "restaurant margins are too slim to afford better working conditions" - prices may only be as low as they are because of suppression of wages.

And in the RPG industry, they're clearly luxuries, and perhaps slightly underpriced. So even without cutting into the monopolistic pricing margins I'd think the big publishing houses have room to raise prices & pay their staff a little better.

When I was buying my first RPG materials with carefully hoarded allowance in the early 1980s, I believe hardbacks were $20, which is > $60 today. Second edition WFRP was $40 for a single hardcover book sometime after 1986! I actually made my little brother pay $4 to "share" it, and he ended up keeping it after I went off to university. Zweihander might have been a waste of money, not a replacement, but at least it wasn't $120+; it was only $50.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on November 10, 2022, 10:48:34 PM
Unionising only really works for workers who produce things people can't do without - electricity, transport and so on. So if they go on strike then it inconveniences the public enough they and the government put pressure on the company to give in.

Unionising doesn't work as well for workers who produce luxuries, like restaurant food, movies and roleplaying games. If they go on strike people mostly shrug and get on with their lives.

Bingo.

This is going to fail miserably. Although I'd be 100% for it, if I'm elected King of the Union.

This feels like leftist horseshit, and doubly so due to the fact it's from Polygon.

Broadly speaking, gaming products are already too expensive.

I'm not going to get into an argument about what is a "fair price" for a TTRPG book. WotC charges a price, Paizo charges a price, FFG charges a price, so on and so forth. It is what it is. I'm just going to assume that what they're charging is "reasonable" given their costs and move on.

I'm not paying an extra $10 for a TTRPG book. Food, fuel, and energy is getting more expensive. If all of these entertainment industry employees want to make more money by joining a union, they need to call up their local Pipefitters, Teamsters, or IBEW chapter. There are plenty of jobs available.

QuoteA second Noble Knight Games employee, who asked to speak anonymously, continued: "The tabletop industry is exciting, and it's fun. I think employers count on that when they offer us wages that aren't in line with the responsibilities that we're being asked to have....."

This is one of the reasons it's so frustrating to try to discuss this kind of thing: specifics are being deliberately kept out of the public view. What responsibilities are the NKG workers being asked to assume? And how far short do their current wages fall from what they'd consider "fair" for that? Are they being ordered in on weekends to spend hours unloading hundred-pound boxes for two bucks an hour and free pizza, or what?

In some* of these unionization attempts, the workers include creative control of the products going out as part of their demands.  Now, I'm not opposed to workers asking for better pay, or a removal of specific bad management practices, but that's some bullshit.  Billy in the mailroom doesn't get to veto the lead designer's work.



*Clownfish reported on this with one of the comic book companies trying to unionize. The office staff wanted creative control over the freelancer's work that was coming in to get printed and shipped.

Quote from: DM_Curt on November 12, 2022, 07:39:23 AM
In some* of these unionization attempts, the workers include creative control of the products going out as part of their demands.  Now, I'm not opposed to workers asking for better pay, or a removal of specific bad management practices, but that's some bullshit.  Billy in the mailroom doesn't get to veto the lead designer's work.



*Clownfish reported on this with one of the comic book companies trying to unionize. The office staff wanted creative control over the freelancer's work that was coming in to get printed and shipped.

I dunno, if Billy in the Mailroom actually plays the game and has years of experience with the games fans, then maybe he would have better insight into the game than the lead designer the Big Boss just brought in whose only credit is as a Tik Tok influencer or videogame programmer.

How's it working out for Paizo? Probably a reason they are now producing 5E products (besides the backlash of 2E Pathfinder). Probably need more income to pay those union rates.