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Activision Blizzard Employees Release Demands to Address Culture of Harassment and Abuse

(Santa Monica, California) — In an effort to create a safe work environment at Activision and ensure that company management fulfills its obligations under its consent decree with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to prevent workplace harassment, discrimination, and retaliation, a group of current and former Activision employees today announced the formation of the Worker Committee Against Sex and Gender Discrimination and released a set of demands.

“We believe it is imperative that workers have a voice in Activision Blizzard’s anti-discrimination policies – without that, the company’s culture of harassment and abuse will continue to go unchecked. We hope to have a productive conversation with leadership where they acknowledge these growing concerns and enact the demands brought forth by the committee.” - Emily Knief, Senior Motion Graphic Designer

Activision has consistently tried to silence workers who have raised concerns about the company’s toxic work environment. Activision illegally retaliated against workers after walkouts over working conditions, resisted allowing the judge to hold a basic fairness hearing where workers could testify as part of the EEOC's investigation of sexual harassment allegations, and attempted to block workers at Raven Software from holding a union election.

It is clear to workers that the only way to expedite the necessary culture and policy shifts within the company is to actively organize to reshape things internally. Now, more than ever management must mitigate potential harms and implement these demands to support all workers.” - Kara Fannon, QA Functional Tester

The workers’ demands include:

  • End of all mandatory arbitration
    • Employees opening discrimination cases, including sex harassment, will be able to take the company and their abuser to court..
  • Independent Investigations
    • All claims of discrimination, including sex harassment, are to be investigated by a committee of non biased, independent, unaffiliated, outside third party investigators. Any investigation or investigator found to have been connected to the c-suite or impacted parties needs to be reinvestigated. If the investigator has any connection to ABK, they must disclose this prior to the investigation.
  • Protection from Retaliation
    • Within 180 days of filing a claim, or until resolution of the dispute, if an employee is demoted or removed from their team or their work changes in other ways (work gets taken away from them for instance, or they are disciplined) thataction is presumed to be retaliation.
  • Lactation Protections
    • Persons breastfeeding / chestfeeding/ pumping are provided the proper private room to safely do so.
  • Trans Protections
    • Create a Trans Network to foster support in a safe environment with mentorship and solidarity among trans employees, with an example being the women’s network and veteran networks.

The full list of demands can be found HERE

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