SEGA of America workers win vote to unionize

SEGA workers scored a massive victory in the fight for workers rights in the video game industry with a successful vote to form a union. Of the 170 votes submitted, 91 workers voted in favor of unionizing, and 26 voted against it. There were a handful of votes that were challenged and thus, not counted.

The news came from the employees themselves, as the news was shared from the official AEGIS-CWA Twitter account. “Our 200+ member union is now the LARGEST multi-department union of organized workers in the ENTIRE gaming industry,” the tweet reads. “So excited to celebrate this win & head to the bargaining table w/ @SEGA to continue building this company we love!”

What happens next will be quite interesting, as SEGA decided not to voluntarily recognize AEGIS-CWA as a union when the group originally formed earlier this year, which led to today’s vote. While American video game companies have slowly been unionizing at some of the biggest companies, the movement has not yet reached Japan’s major players. Although this unionization was done by American Sega employees in California, it could set a precedent for SEGA proper, as well as other companies in the video game industry’s Japanese arm.

AEGIS-CWA follows in the footsteps of other notable video game unions in recent years, including those at Activision Blizzard and ZeniMax. Here’s hoping that the move will lead to better rights and conditions for the folks working at the iconic studio. It’s arguably not even the only piece of good SEGA news to hit in the last few days, as the publisher recently shared that it was scaling back efforts to produce games that feature NFTs and blockchain technology. For more news out of SEGA’s new union, stick with us here on Shacknews.