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Ubisoft Closes Halifax Studio Just After Employees Unionized
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I support unions, but at this point I'd be terrified to join a new one. Especially when you're somewhere owned by a large company or private equity firm. There are just no protections for unions anymore, and these days large companies would rather just close down entire departments than give employees basic rights. I get that the fear and intimidation are the point, but that really doesn't help. Having a gun pointed in your face is also a form of fear and intimidation, but knowing that doesn't make it any less dangerous when it happens to you. I just don't know what to do anymore, every single thing feels like a losing option while the world just continues to get worse and worse. I've scrimped and saved for years to have some sort of nest egg, and its barely more than what more successful people casually spend in a week. I don't see a way out of this mess.
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Ubisoft is actually the worst possible video game corporation. They almost never make a game that's worthy of anyone's time, their business practices are scummy, they kill off their games and tell people to get used to not owning them, treat their workers like shit and their stock price is in the gutter so not even the wallstreet ghouls benefit from how awful they are. It's incredible.
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It is also a right in Canada, where this happened and where we don't refer to our rights as "constitutional" since they don't primarily service from there.These employees did exercise their right to unionize, but there's no way to force employers to keep the union. A union just means that you can bargain collectively, and it should theoretically protect employees because what kind of scummy employer wants to fire ALL their employees, right? Turns out Ubisoft IS that scummy.
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I support unions, but at this point I'd be terrified to join a new one. Especially when you're somewhere owned by a large company or private equity firm. There are just no protections for unions anymore, and these days large companies would rather just close down entire departments than give employees basic rights. I get that the fear and intimidation are the point, but that really doesn't help. Having a gun pointed in your face is also a form of fear and intimidation, but knowing that doesn't make it any less dangerous when it happens to you. I just don't know what to do anymore, every single thing feels like a losing option while the world just continues to get worse and worse. I've scrimped and saved for years to have some sort of nest egg, and its barely more than what more successful people casually spend in a week. I don't see a way out of this mess.
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Ubisoft is actually the worst possible video game corporation. They almost never make a game that's worthy of anyone's time, their business practices are scummy, they kill off their games and tell people to get used to not owning them, treat their workers like shit and their stock price is in the gutter so not even the wallstreet ghouls benefit from how awful they are. It's incredible.Rockstar had a similar scandal firing unionising workers last year
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These employees did exercise their right to unionize, but there's no way to force employers to keep the union. A union just means that you can bargain collectively, and it should theoretically protect employees because what kind of scummy employer wants to fire ALL their employees, right? Turns out Ubisoft IS that scummy.I mean it absolutely is illegal to retaliate against unionizing workers by firing them, that's why they didn't say "we fired them because they unionized". And Canada isn't America, we don't have right to work legislation and you can't generally just fire people en masse without cause out of the blue
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Rockstar had a similar scandal firing unionising workers last year
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I mean it absolutely is illegal to retaliate against unionizing workers by firing them, that's why they didn't say "we fired them because they unionized". And Canada isn't America, we don't have right to work legislation and you can't generally just fire people en masse without cause out of the blueExcept ubisoft is hemorrhaging money so it's an extremely easy sell to say "the studio is not profitable and we're in dire need to cut waste" and indeed can the lot.
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Except ubisoft is hemorrhaging money so it's an extremely easy sell to say "the studio is not profitable and we're in dire need to cut waste" and indeed can the lot.
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They can, and they can try to make the case that this is unrelated to unionization and fight that in court. Good luckI mean, I'd bet dollars to donuts Ubisoft would win it handily if it gets to a class action or whatever equivalent. For one, they're basically on the verge of falling over so the economic motivation is a no-brainer. For two, it's a massive multinational company headquartered in France (a country with stronger labour laws than Canada) with plenty of legal advice available on these matters. I highly doubt they'd do it *this* blatantly if they were not confident this is an easy sell, instead of waiting something like 6 months to separate the 2 events enough for plausible deniability. For three, good luck holding a foreign company accountable, in general.
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I mean, I'd bet dollars to donuts Ubisoft would win it handily if it gets to a class action or whatever equivalent. For one, they're basically on the verge of falling over so the economic motivation is a no-brainer. For two, it's a massive multinational company headquartered in France (a country with stronger labour laws than Canada) with plenty of legal advice available on these matters. I highly doubt they'd do it *this* blatantly if they were not confident this is an easy sell, instead of waiting something like 6 months to separate the 2 events enough for plausible deniability. For three, good luck holding a foreign company accountable, in general.
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Their games have been reheated bongwater broth for more than a decade now, more predictable than even Sony and far less competent in execution, did you need *more* reasons?
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I mean, I'd bet dollars to donuts Ubisoft would win it handily if it gets to a class action or whatever equivalent. For one, they're basically on the verge of falling over so the economic motivation is a no-brainer. For two, it's a massive multinational company headquartered in France (a country with stronger labour laws than Canada) with plenty of legal advice available on these matters. I highly doubt they'd do it *this* blatantly if they were not confident this is an easy sell, instead of waiting something like 6 months to separate the 2 events enough for plausible deniability. For three, good luck holding a foreign company accountable, in general.> I highly doubt they’d do it this blatantly if they were not confident this is an easy sell I mean, I would have agreed with you, except we've also just recently seen even *more* blatant and indefensible union-busting from Rockstar in the UK, another country with good labour laws, and another country with more than adequate legal resources. I think you're probably right that Ubisoft has sufficient legal cover to win this case, but that's because of the merits of this case, not because a big company from a country with good laws could *never* do something stupidly illegal.