On Tuesday, May 7th, three leaders of Activision Quality Assurance United / CWA Local 7250 (Emily Danko, Andrew Snell, and Allen Junge, video game testers at Quality Assurance Minnesota / Activision Blizzard in Eden Prairie, MN) were invited by CWA District 7 Vice President Susie McAllister to attend a meet and greet with her and CWA President Claude Cummings, Jr. during the 2024 CWA District 7 Conference in Vancouver, WA.
Also in attendance during the meet and greet from CWA Local 7250 were President Kieran Knutson, Executive Vice President Michelle Richardson and Area Vice President Traci Doll as well as CWA Deputy Director of Organizing Tim Dubnau and CWA District 7 Organizing Coordinator Ted Hooker. President Cummings was very interested to learn more about the video game industry as well as the organizing campaign. He joked about his own video game playing expertise and generously offered to come out and visit the work site in Eden Prairie, MN to meet with more members at some point in the future.
Later that morning, Emily, Andrew, and Allen gave a 20 minute presentation about their historic organizing campaign to the attendees of the 2024 CWA DIstrict 7 Conference.
They spoke about the campaigns history including the organic “A Better ABK” walkouts in 2021 protesting sexual misconduct and harassment allegations against senior leadership which sparked their union organizing drive with CWA, overcoming union busting from Activision Blizzard management while helping create the leverage for the groundbreaking neutrality agreement between CWA and Microsoft, and then (working together with workers in Texas and California) moving swiftly once the neutrality agreement was in place to win their neutrality election (390 Yes to 8 No) which established the Activision Quality Assurance United 575 member bargaining unit as the largest in the video game industry in the United States to date.
They highlighted that the 336 new members in CWA Local 7250 in Minnesota will roughly double the local’s membership and provide 7250 with a transformative infusion of resources, enthusiasm, and energy. They closed the presentation to thunderous applause by borrowing from the Call of Duty slogan that the “Ultimate Weapon is Team ” while showing a graphic from the game combined with CWA , CODE-CWA, and AQAU-CWA logos.
Submitted by:
Ted Hooker
District 7 Organizing Coordinator
Communications Workers of America
ProtonMail: thooker@cwa-secure.org
Pronouns: he/him/his
