Ubisoft Staff Strike Following In-Person Work Order

As we’ve recently learned, massive changes are on their way for Ubisoft after a recent wave of failures hit their company, causing both their stock prices to fall and a call for internal investigations to improve the quality of their products.

Following the recent delay of Assassin’s Creed Shadows and the benign sales of Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft told gamesindustry.biz that they will require staff to work at least three out of five days each week in person.

In response to this news, the video game workers union of France, STJV (Syndicat des Travailleurs et Travailleuses du Jeu Vidéo), has notified workers to refuse to work between the 15th and 17th of October, aiming to put pressure back on Ubisoft.

Workers’ main concern about the requirement for in-person work is that this industry has functioned for over four years primarily through online work. Calling for sudden in-person work will impact people’s lives, including situations where some may simply not be able to return to work at all.

Although Ubisoft’s order has been told to “respect individual circumstances,” this change for staff will not only impact their livelihoods but also cause a huge hiccup for the projects currently in development as staff try to reorganize under a new workflow.

These aspects are noted by the STJV, who explained in their release that:

So, after failing profit-sharing negotiations with Ubisoft, STJV announced this strike order for its workers with a few key demands that attempt to uphold and improve working conditions.

Demands Of The Strike

STJV’s initial and most forthright demand is that Ubisoft actually negotiate with employees for a return to in-person work.

It is fair that Ubisoft wants workers to return to in-person work. Still, the recent order was deemed arbitrary, as Ubisoft counted the number of in-person days by the week, not by month, making it harder for workers to select the days they go in.

Secondly, STJV demands increased salaries to help improve the workers’ declining living situation. The main objective is to aim for a 60% profit-sharing margin.

Lastly, they want management to interact with workers in a social dialogue. As STJV points out, in the current situation, management seems to have confused “monologue with dialogue.”

All of these demands attempt to uphold the work conditions for Ubisoft employees, but whether Ubisoft will agree to or negotiate with STJV is undecided as they have yet to respond to the strike order.

Although Ubisoft has already failed to negotiate with its French workers, this latest strike order may have a large enough impact that Ubisoft will return to negotiations and hopefully improve the working conditions for its staff.