Activision Blizzard male employees accused of stealing breast milk
Last Updated on: 10th December 2021, 11:14 pm
The story of the inner working of Activision Blizzard just seems to go from bad to worse with a new unbelievable accusation surfacing every few days.
Accusations over the past year have included a female employee committing suicide following repeated sexual harassment, which included an employee bringing a butt plug with him on a business trip with the employee.
Now, new accusations have been made that male employees have stolen breast milk out of a fridge despite it being padlocked.
The new accusations come from a Discord server set up by women who work at the company and were shared online by Jessica Gonzalez, a Senior Test Analyst for Blizzard.
In the series of tweets, many details were shared regarding the theft, as well as the poor condition of the workspace which left breastfeeding women having to sit on the floor to pump, this is truly shocking to read.
“If you’ve ever wanted a prime example of discrimination at ABK, this is it. This kind of negligence towards breastfeeding workers is criminal anywhere else, but it happened daily at Blizzard. Accommodating shouldn’t be an afterthought. We can and should do better by our workers”
“I’m hoping that a number of items was fixed when I brought this up a few years ago… everyone who was involved has since left, and the last I reported something it appears consistently people drop the ball in maintaining [these] things.
Some of the issues that [I] encountered.
- The chairs would rock backward and could be locked in position to properly position onself to pump. Many mothers were sitting on the floor to pump.
- The tables were made of wood, were porous and textured so even though they were cleaned, breast milk build up and caked on the table, discoloring and leaving trapped milk on the table.
- The outlet situation was a fire hazard. There are only 2 plugs per room, one plug being used by a lamp with a USB jack for phones, no outlet for laptops or extra table space to place a laptop [if] pumping moms wanted to work, or watch a show while pumping. So extension cords were being used.
- Insufficient storage space, there were no locked cubbies for moms to keep their pumps safe, many had to lug them across campus multiple times a day as they didn’t want to leave them behind. At the time women were uncomfortable using B13’s.
- Refrigerators had padlocks that were not consistently locked or could be accessed by other employees. Employees were using the fridges to store beer in. But the reason there were locks on them in the first place is that nursing people’s breast milk would be stolen.
- No-one was keeping up sanitation standards. It did not appear that housekeeping was cleaning those rooms consistently the way the rest of the office was.”
Jessica Gonzalez also shared a message from Stephanie Lyon, a Cyber Security Analyst, with the message saying,
“Actually you know what, I’m not HR so I’m done tiptoeing around these issues to be sensitive, men stole them. And if they want to keep that hush-hush, maybe they should circle back to me when I report these things and share with some transparency on how they plan to respond, and how to mitigate these issues.
Instead of blanket statements like “we took care of them” it’s my job [to] protect employees, I’m not here to hand hold to make people comfortable. I’m here to provide facts and testimony of my investigations. As one of the few women in security, I’m quite frankly tired of seeing HR not follow through on things that should be followed up on.”
During this past week, employees have begun the processing of joining a union, with union cards being seen in the company.
This has led to Activision Blizzard swiftly sending a “Union busting email” being sent to all employees within the company which has also been shared on social media.
“At Activision Blizzard, we are working hard to create a more inclusive, supportive, and rewarding environment, and thank to your input, we are making progress.
In the past few months, we’ve announced that we’re converting nearly 500 temporary workers to full-time employees at Activision Publishing studios, and we have increased wages for a large portion of temporary workers and added paid time off benefits. We introduced a zero-tolerance harassment policy and waived required arbitration of sexual harassment and discrimination claims. We have made significant commitments to increase gender diversity and are dedicating $250 million to accelerate opportunities for diverse talent across the industry. We have more to do, and we believe that direct dialogue between management and employees is essential to the success of Activision Blizzard.
As you may have seen yesterday, there was a communication supported by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) that asked employees to sign and submit union authorization cards. I want to be clear about this: The leadership of Activision Blizzard supports your right, under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), to make your own decision about whether or not to join a union.
As you make this decision for your future, we ask only that you take time to consider the consequences of your signature on the binding legal document presented to you by CWA. Once you sign that document, you will have signed over to CWA the exclusive right “to represent [you] for the purposes of collective bargaining concerning all terms and conditions of employment.” That means that your ability to negotiate all your own working conditions will be turned over to CWA, just as the document says.
Achieving our workplace culture aspirations will best occur through active, transparent dialogue between leaders and employees that we can act upon quickly. That is the better path than simply signing an electronic form offered to you by CWA or awaiting the outcome of a legally-mandated and regulated bargaining process sometime in the future.
If we fail to achieve the workplace goals we have set forth – if we fail to do the things we’ve committed to doing – then of course you will still always have the right to engage with, and vote for, CWA. But we are confident that we will make the progress we’ve previously pledged to make and create a workplace with you that we can all be proud of.
As always, we welcome outreach with concerns or ideas to help make improvements, and there are multiple avenues internally for dialogue, both direct and anonymous.”
Thankfully it looks like it is Jessica’s last day at the company today, and hopefully, many of the other employees won’t be far behind her as it seems like Activision Blizzard are trying everything they can to avoid just simply being decent human beings and cleaning up their company and creating a safe environment for everyone to work and create games.
