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Forums - Nintendo - Nintendo allegedly violates Workers rights to organise

As far as I’m aware, no major video game publishing or dev office in the US allows union workers. In fact, the only major video game company I’m aware of that has unionized workers is Paradox Games (makers of Victoria 2, Crusader Kings, Cities Skylines, Stellaris, EU, and Hearts of Iron).

I’m not against pressuring Nintendo to have a unionized workforce as I feel if anyone has the ability to normalize something across the industry, it’s Nintendo. I am against demonizing Nintendo alone over an industry norm, and if it’s true that people are using it as an excuse to pirate games, report them. Software piracy is illegal, scummy, and undermines customer confidence and the industry—generally, the industry doesn’t respond positively to that kind of activity. What Nintendo does react to is social progress awareness campaigns, which is why LGBT stuff is now recognized by the dev teams.

Last edited by Jumpin - on 19 April 2022

I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.

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Oh so we talking unions.

Unions are useless as tits on a bull in modern society. They are more focused on taking people's membership money than actually helping people when it all get's too hard.



 

 

These are just allegations at the moment (obviously) but they would not surprise me if true. Only about 10% of American workers are unionized. There is a ton of nonunion work in the video games industry as well. I don't think any large American publisher or American branch of an foreign publisher are unionized.
Nintendo probably doesn't want unions, and instead of negotiating I'm sure they will probably try to crush them.



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cycycychris said:
abronn627 said:

There’s not much details, but this seems weird.
One worker filed a complaint for what seems to be unionization, but what’s the angle with hiring firm ?
I don’t get it…

The employee(s) of this complaint seems to be a contract employee from my understanding. In my experience with most contract work. Companies often let these staffing firms fill and manage these contracts. So for example, you might work at Nintendo offices every day, but officially speaking, you are a contract worker (under fix time period, ie. 1,2,3 years) who is officially employed by staffing firm. Nintendo pays staffing firm to pay you, you get no Nintendo benefits, only the shitty ones the staffing firm offers. It's a terrible gig for the employee. The worst part is that companies will often give these staffing firms like 70k for salaries of the position and the staffing firm will basically find the most desperate person they can and get them to take 40k or something like that. Then profit the rest, on top of the fees they charge.

So in conclusion, they are listing both since they probably officially work for staffing firm, but work at the Nintendo office and Nintendo bosses are there supervisors.

Sounds exactly like Japan, so I am not surprised Nintendo would use similar things in America.



I did a little more digging on what workers, current and former, are saying about the company.
DISCLAIMER: I am pretty new to this sort of thing so I apologise in advance if I am not using the most reliable sources.

The website glassdoor has nintendo of america at a pretty high 4.1/5 average stars with over 340 reviews as of the 11th April 2022

Indeed.com seems to have similar numbers, 4.1/5
Though with a lower review count of 190

There were a few more sites but they didn't have many reviews on them
While it seems that most workers enjoy or enjoyed their time at the company, 2 things stuck out to me while reading

It does seem that contract workers have it significantly worse off and there seems to not be a lot of opportunities for career growth within nintendo



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There isn't enough information publicly available to reasonably conclude that Ninty has done anything wrong. Anybody can file a complaint.



No atrocity Ninty could commit on workers could beat having forced them to watch Reggie's shiny chin for years, if they got away with it, they're untouchable.



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I hope Nintendo fires that wimp summarily.



JackHandy said:

At this point, I no longer have the energy enough to investigate things of this nature. It seems like there are two realities. The one online, and the one offline. And neither of them even resemble each other. One is uber critical, uber sensitive, uber offended, uber vigilant, ready to fight, ready to point out every tiny, minute, minuscule little bit of negativity that the world has to offer so they can yell about it endlessly... and the other just wants a job, a place to live and to raise their kids in peace.

At one time, in my younger days, I participated in the former. Now, I live with the latter.

It's better that way.

Interesting take, I suppose it sums up how I feel about these matters lately. I guess it naturally comes with age? Or maybe we just get tired? Sometimes I wish the world could be offline again, even if for a brief moment.



EnricoPallazzo said:
JackHandy said:

At this point, I no longer have the energy enough to investigate things of this nature. It seems like there are two realities. The one online, and the one offline. And neither of them even resemble each other. One is uber critical, uber sensitive, uber offended, uber vigilant, ready to fight, ready to point out every tiny, minute, minuscule little bit of negativity that the world has to offer so they can yell about it endlessly... and the other just wants a job, a place to live and to raise their kids in peace.

At one time, in my younger days, I participated in the former. Now, I live with the latter.

It's better that way.

Interesting take, I suppose it sums up how I feel about these matters lately. I guess it naturally comes with age? Or maybe we just get tired? Sometimes I wish the world could be offline again, even if for a brief moment.

What's the saying again.. If you're not idealistic when you're young, you have no heart. And if you're not practical by the time you mature, you have no brain. Something to that effect.