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Coverage | Newsletter | Intel | Events
Coverage | Newsletter | Intel
September 8, 2020
The traditional video game console business can now consider itself disrupted.
A bit after 3 a.m. ET on Tuesday, Microsoft revealed via a tweet that the low-cost edition of its new gaming machine will cost $299. On its own, that could seem like a run-of-the-mill pricing announcement.
But in the context of the technical and financial changes sweeping the $160 billion game industry, the relatively inexpensive Xbox Series S may prove a watershed. The announcement places significant pricing pressure on Sony, Microsoft's console archrival, and underlines how the global technology giants are flexing their muscles to reshape electronic entertainment.
In short: Microsoft is using its money and clout to try to turn gaming into a subscription business.
Sure, I'll go first
Sony and Microsoft, the two dominant makers of "mainstream" game consoles (Nintendo enjoys the luxury of a private niche, based on exclusive franchises and less-powerful hardware) confirmed long ago that they will each introduce new game machines this fall. It has also been clear that each company intends to release two versions of its new console: one with an optical drive (which costs more) and one without (which costs less).
Until Tuesday, neither company had announced a price or specific release date for either of their new devices. (Microsoft had not even officially confirmed the existence of its low-cost version.)
A series of leaks Monday night revealed the $299 pricing and a video trailer for the Series S. The leaks were followed overnight first by a perfect meme response from Microsoft's Xbox account and then the official confirmation at 3:13 a.m. A credible report from Windows Central said both the Series S and the more-expensive Series X will launch on Nov. 10 and also reaffirmed the crucial detail that the consoles will be sold with zero-interest monthly installment plans. That launch date and installment plan was confirmed by Microsoft on Wednesday.
As Protocol reported in July, Microsoft plans to allow at least some consumers to pay for Xbox hardware and access to hundreds of top-end games through Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass service, for either $24.99 or $34.99 a month over two years, Microsoft confirmed Wednesday.
Whether this was all a highly choreographed PR "leak" and confirmation by Microsoft, the news represents two big cannonballs flying toward the powerful ship that is Sony's PlayStation game business. They don't even have to land squarely to affect Sony's course.
First, the $299 price for the Xbox Series S is extremely aggressive (and attractive to gamers). Anything under $400 would have been low. At $299, it seems likely that Microsoft is barely breaking even or even losing money on each box sold. Microsoft can afford that, but can Sony come close to matching? Sony is far more dependent on game profits than is Microsoft, which could make matching $299 painful for the Japanese company.
Second, Microsoft is offering gamers a deal to avoid spending hundreds of dollars up front on hardware and $60 or more for each top-quality game, which is a fundamental disruption of decades of video game business models. And no company relies more heavily on that traditional model than Sony. Sony still hasn't announced the pricing of its new consoles.
Satya Nadella picks up the controller
The low Series S pricing, bankrolling a zero-interest monthly payment plan and the investment in the Xbox Game Pass subscription service (not to mention xCloud cloud gaming technology) indicate a substantial long-term strategic and financial commitment by Microsoft to reshaping the game business in its own image rather than engaging in yet another "console war" on traditional terms. This appears to represent Satya Nadella buying into a broader strategy developed by Phil Spencer, Microsoft's head of gaming, and his team.
It is an image of the game industry that raises significant strategic questions for Sony. The overall message that gamers are hearing from the company right now about the PlayStation 5 is: "Buy a PS5 so you can play a new Spider-Man game and a new Ratchet & Clank game."
That will certainly be enough for hardcore Sony fans. But now that more Xbox details have emerged, many gamers will be looking for more.
Update: This article was updated to include confirmation from Microsoft of the Xbox Series X and installment plan pricing. Updated September 9.
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Seth Schiesel
Seth Schiesel ( @SethSchiesel) is a contributing editor for Protocol focused on the business of video games and adjacent industries. He is a former editorial writer for The Boston Globe, entrepreneur and business reporter, technology writer and video game critic for The New York Times.
Protocol | Workplace
The pay gap persists for Black women
"The pay gap is a multifaceted problem and any time you have a complex problem, there's not a single solution that's going to solve it."
For every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men, Black women are paid just 63 cents, according to the American Community Survey Census data.
Photo: Christine/Unsplash
August 3, 2021
Amber Burton (@amberbburton) is a reporter at Protocol. Previously, she covered personal finance and diversity in business at The Wall Street Journal. She earned an M.S. in Strategic Communications from Columbia University and B.A. in English and Journalism from Wake Forest University. She lives in North Carolina.
August 3, 2021
Last year's racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd led many tech companies to commit to promoting equity within their organizations, including working toward pay equity. But despite efforts, the wage gap for Black women still persists. For every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men, Black women are paid just 63 cents, according to the American Community Survey Census data.
Black Women's Equal Pay Day on Tuesday represents the estimated number of days into the year it would take for Black women to make what their white, non-Hispanic male counterparts made at the end of the previous year, according to the organization Equal Pay Today. And while the responsibility to fix the pay gap falls mostly on companies to rectify, some female employees have taken matters into their own hands and held companies to their asserted values by negotiating higher pay.
People analytics firm Visier found for Black employees as a whole it will take 78 years to reach what their white colleagues are making. And in 2020 there was a regression of earlier progress made for Black workers between 2017 and 2019, a recent change that is thought to be due to the pandemic.
Though in the past few months, the labor shortage and the "Great Resignation" has added some bargaining power for tech workers. In June 2021, the number of unemployed people who quit or voluntarily left their job to seek new employment increased by 164,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The competition for talent among tech companies has pushed salaries up despite the pandemic. The average U.S. tech salary rose 3.6% from 2019 to 2020, according to Dice, although the report did not include a breakdown of salaries according to race or gender.
Ariel Lopez, a career coach who works with women in technology, said that she is encouraging her Black female clients to recognize their power during this time.
"I think right now we're seeing a shift to where people are taking their power back and they're making their demands not only of where they want to be working, the type of place they want to be working and how they want to be treated."
Lopez has guided Black women over the past year in how to ask for more money without the face-to-face conversation in the office, but said she recognizes a lot of the responsibility lies with the companies to promote and retain Black women.
"I do believe the crux of the issue and what we're looking at has everything to do with companies and their lack of fair, efficient and inclusive processes as it pertains to hiring, and also as it pertains to retention," Lopez told Protocol.
She said technology companies can work to fix this by introducing more transparency into job descriptions and onboarding.
"People should know what they're getting themselves into so the moment someone signs an offer letter they are clear on what this looks like. I think if we're talking about tech specifically explaining to people what their stock options are," she said.
Lopez has found that many new employees are not made aware of what a vesting schedule is and how long a person would have to be at the company to reap the benefits. Omitting information such as this could cause a big disadvantage for women of color in terms of pay.
Jacqueline Twillie, a career coach with a focus on negotiation, has also spent time coaching Black women in tech during this time. Twillie, the founder of ZeroGap, a leadership development company that coaches women working in male-dominated industries, believes the solution to closing the gap should be varied.
"The pay gap is a multifaceted problem and any time you have a complex problem, there's not a single solution that's going to solve it," Twillie told Protocol. "So part of the work is going to be done inside of companies with their compensation teams, and part of that is making sure women have access to childcare, and family care. We know the burden, especially in 2020, that women took in taking care of their families."
Twillie said she likes to remind her clients that the one thing they can control is negotiating when they receive an offer, since even in the current job market the first offer is rarely the best offer.
Others also suggest being clear about what you want and expressing exactly what you need to do your best work, whether that's more compensation or a new location. Minda Harts, a career coach and author of "The Memo: What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table," told Protocol that she encourages her clients to leverage their relationships at work and be honest about their specific needs.
"Because before we move on and look for another job, can it work where we are? We won't know that unless we let people know and we're clear and transparent," she said.
Jacquette M. Timmons, a financial behaviorist, told Protocol that with more tech employees working remotely, Black women are having to be even more intentional in reaching their compensation goals. She suggests networking in all directions by sending a short email to a colleague after a video meeting since in-office chats around the watercooler have become rare.
"I think that this is really an invitation to be that much more purposeful and intentional about who you are reaching out to, why you're reaching out to them, what projects you're raising your hand for. And then also, I think an important piece is making sure that you're tracking your work and you're tracking the reaction to the work," she said.
Timmons said true improvement in closing the wage gap for Black women will only occur if CEOs and other C-suite executives make the issue one of their values.
"If they do not do that, then no, there's no amount of hope that's going to change it," she said.
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Amber Burton (@amberbburton) is a reporter at Protocol. Previously, she covered personal finance and diversity in business at The Wall Street Journal. She earned an M.S. in Strategic Communications from Columbia University and B.A. in English and Journalism from Wake Forest University. She lives in North Carolina.
Sponsored Content
The future of AI: Deeper insights, personalization and problem-solving stand to transform how we use AI across devices and industries
August 2, 2021
Alex Katouzian currently serves as senior vice president and general manager of the Mobile, Compute and Infrastructure (MCI) Business Unit at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. In this role, Katouzian is responsible for the profit, loss and strategy of the MCI BU, which includes business lines for Mobile Handset Products and Application Processor Technologies, 4G and 5G Mobile Broadband for embedded applications, Small and Macro Cells, Modem Technologies, Compute products across multiple OS’, eXtended Reality and AI Edge Cloud products.
July 26, 2021
What comes to mind when you think of AI? In the past, it might have been the Turing test, a sci-fi character or IBM's Deep Blue-defeating chess champion Garry Kasparov. Today, instead of copying human intelligence, we're seeing immense progress made in using AI to unobtrusively simplify and enrich our own intelligence and experiences. Natural language processing, modern encrypted security solutions, advanced perception and imaging capabilities, next-generation data management and logistics, and automotive assistance are some of the many ways AI is quietly yet unmistakably driving some of the latest advancements inside our phones, PCs, cars and other crucial 21st century devices. And the combination of 5G and AI is enabling a world with distributed intelligence where AI processing is happening on devices and in the cloud.
We've invested in AI for over a decade, and continue to do so today, having recently brought on- board the top-notch AI research team from Twenty Billion Neurons GmbH (TwentyBN), including their high-quality video dataset that is widely used by the AI research community. We are excited to have TwentyBN founding CEO Roland Memisevic, who co-led the world-renowned AI institute MILA with Yoshua Bengio, and team expand our AI R&D base in Toronto, which is long recognized as a hotbed for innovation and research in the field of AI. Furthermore, AI is now a core component of our mobile platforms. And breakthroughs like our 6th Gen Qualcomm AI Engine are helping change the game — literally. It's designed to boost performance in everything from connectivity and photography to gaming. By integrating directly with the phone's camera, modem, and other components of our mobile platform design, AI supports faster, more efficient processing. The Qualcomm AI Engine enables powerful image and language processing capabilities for clearer pictures and video via ArcSoft's neural network, as well as real-time translations and voice assistance.
Our successes in mobile — together with our ecosystem collaborators — allowed us to move AI beyond the smartphone into other industries segments like PCs, XR, factories, and auto. AI is not only making things more intelligent, it's helping simplify and enrich our daily lives. Take PCs, for example. Sophos security solutions optimized for our mobile compute platforms enable lightning- fast threat detection. And AI is redefining the video call experience for PC users, delivering smoother performance and quality. AI is impacting the ongoing growth in XR as well. All perception technologies in XR use AI, so wearers of smart devices can better see, understand, and interact with the digital world. Next-generation warehouse management, logistics, and asset tracking showcase the power of computer vision and machine learning capabilities to increase speed and efficiency. And for cars, AI-enhanced digital cockpits with voice assistance, immersive audio, and rich visuals provide precise interactions between vehicle and driver along with contextual safety awareness.
In this latest video from our ongoing "The Future of" series moderated by Karl Freund from Cambrian AI, I sat down with Qualcomm Technologies' Vice President of Product Management Ziad Asghar and Co-founder and CEO of Hugging Face Clément Delangue. We discussed how AI will continue reimagining lives and industries. We also spoke about what AI means to different consumers, and how their demands fit into how we continue to shape on-device AI in our respective fields. AI and machine learning are growing exponentially within data centers, cloud computing networks, and many other devices beyond phones and PCs, and we dive into how companies are strategizing around evolving AI capabilities as the technology becomes a larger part of their businesses.
The perception of AI has radically changed, and its applications will continue to impact the world and our experiences in ways we've never imagined. That's why Qualcomm Technologies invests so much in building AI into the backbone of our mobile platforms, and why we'll continue to be a leader in applications involving deeper AI-driven insights, personalization, and problem-solving.
Learn more about how AI is transforming everything.
Discover the power of on-device AI with the Qualcomm AI Engine.
Read about the Future of the PC and how 5G connectivity will transform laptop computing.
Qualcomm AI Engine is a product of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.
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Alex Katouzian currently serves as senior vice president and general manager of the Mobile, Compute and Infrastructure (MCI) Business Unit at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. In this role, Katouzian is responsible for the profit, loss and strategy of the MCI BU, which includes business lines for Mobile Handset Products and Application Processor Technologies, 4G and 5G Mobile Broadband for embedded applications, Small and Macro Cells, Modem Technologies, Compute products across multiple OS’, eXtended Reality and AI Edge Cloud products.
Protocol | Workplace
Tech company hybrid work policies are becoming more flexible, not less
Twitter, LinkedIn and Asana are already changing their hybrid policies to allow for more flexibility.
Photo: FG Trade/Getty Images
August 3, 2021
Allison Levitsky is a reporter at Protocol covering workplace issues in tech. She previously covered big tech companies and the tech workforce for the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Allison grew up in the Bay Area and graduated from UC Berkeley.
August 3, 2021
Twitter, LinkedIn and Asana are all loosening up their strategies around hybrid work, allowing for more flexibility before even fully reopening their offices.
In the last week and a half, Twitter announced it's adopting an asynchronous-first approach, and both Asana and LinkedIn said they would increase the amount of time their employees can work remotely.
The three changes point to one thing: With 17 months of remote work in the rearview mirror — and the delta variant now postponing office reopenings — work styles in the tech industry are getting more flexible, not less.
Twitter tells employees to be less Zoom-happy
"Any company that goes backwards will be backwards," Twitter's chief human resources officer, Jennifer Christie, told Protocol on Thursday. "Companies that have tried to drive this top-down and say 'This is how you'll work' are finding a lot of resistance from employees."
Twitter has been looking into asynchronous work since late 2018, meeting with leaders at remote-only companies like GitLab to better understand async. The social media giant has also been planning to become a more remote-friendly company for several years now, Christie said.
Almost three years and a pandemic later, Twitter leaders now encourage employees to replace some meetings with other collaboration tools, such as Slack and document sharing.
"There's a higher bar for having a meeting," Christie said. "We still will have meetings. People won't be in meetings 12 hours a day, back to back."
The new approach better accommodates remote workers who live in different time zones, Christie said, noting that she doesn't expect the company to adopt async-first overnight. It's worth noting that unlike async companies like GitLab and Doist, Twitter's executives still plan to reopen the company's offices rather than go fully remote.
Perhaps for that reason, Christie said Twitter won't be a fully asynchronous company, either.
"It doesn't mean everything has to be async," Christie said. "It just means that instead of everything having to be live, everything having to be a meeting — which doesn't work as well for distributed teams all the time — we want people to think async."
LinkedIn lifts its 50% policy
Meanwhile, both LinkedIn and Asana announced last week that they would increase the amount of time their employees can work remotely after reopening their offices.
LinkedIn will remove the expectation that employees work from the office at least half the time after its offices reopen, CEO Ryan Roslansky wrote in a blog post.
"We trust each other to do our best work where it works best for us and our teams," Roslansky wrote. "We've learned every individual and every team works differently, so we're moving away from a one-size-fits-all policy."
Roslansky expects more LinkedIn employees to be remote than before the pandemic, but noted that 87% of the company's workforce still wants to go to the office sometimes.
Notably, neither Twitter nor LinkedIn has set a date at which it expects to reopen its offices. Last week, Twitter closed the offices that had reopened. Christie attributed that decision to there being "too much conflicting or unknown information out there that we just don't feel comfortable having our people come in."
LinkedIn has done away with its plans to fully reopen next month, but has opened some offices, including in New York and San Francisco, spokesperson Alaia Howell said.
Asana backs off of Wednesdays-only approach
Asana, meanwhile, has postponed its reopening until February or later and is reversing an earlier plan to only let its employees work remotely on Wednesdays.
The company will now allow for remote work on both Wednesdays and Fridays, which provides more flexibility for employees who otherwise would have faced an unusually office-centric model.
Asana had touted the earlier Wednesdays-only approach as one that would maximize the benefits of in-person collaboration, which is interesting given that the nearly $12 billion company sells project management software that allows teams to collaborate from anywhere.
Part of the reason for Asana's emphasis on the office is how quickly Asana has been growing, according to the company's head of people, Anna Binder. Between March 2020 and July 2021, the company hired more than 500 employees for a total of more than 1,000.
Evidently, much more growth is in store: The company has a new 12-story headquarters in San Francisco.
"We really believe from a culture perspective that collaboration and trust are spurred and reinforced by the daily shared experiences, those face-to-face communications," Binder said. "The drive-bys, the minutes before and after an official meeting starts, the open space where there's whiteboards everywhere and that people get to just drop in and do jam sessions."
Pros and cons to the in-office approach
Both Binder and Asana's head of diversity and inclusion, Sonja Gittens Ottley, acknowledged that the in-office approach had limitations when it came to hiring more candidates from underrepresented backgrounds, including women and people of color.
Some have touted flexible work as a possible route to diversify the tech workforce, given that it allows for more remote hiring outside of expensive tech hubs and provides more options to those who have caregiving responsibilities or simply don't want to work in the office.
Asana's leaders say they're more focused on building an office culture that promotes retention through inclusivity.
"It probably does impact recruiting," Gittens Ottley said last month. "The thing that I'm interested in, though, is: After you've done that recruiting and you get people in, how are you ensuring that they're staying? How are you ensuring that those folks are thriving?"
Binder said that employees' individual productivity "wasn't part of the discussion" when it came to crafting Asana's original four-day-a-week approach to office work; Asana is thinking more about collaboration and innovation across teams.
"When I think about productivity, I think about something that can be easily measured, like 'How many tickets did I close?' or 'How many phone calls did I take?'" Binder said. "That's not what we're talking about here. These are knowledge workers that are innovating and co-creating on a daily basis."
Another Silicon Valley company, Pure Storage, is also fond of its in-office culture. The company will allow its employees to work remotely part-time, but won't support remote workers after it fully reopens its offices, CEO Charlie Giancarlo told Protocol last month.
Although Pure Storage employees have told the company that they feel more productive working from home, managers report that team productivity is down, Giancarlo said. He sees this as an indicator that remote work makes it hard to innovate together.
"It's a team sport," Giancarlo said. "We don't operate in a sport where one engineer operating on their own can create brilliant things. It really requires collaboration."
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Allison Levitsky is a reporter at Protocol covering workplace issues in tech. She previously covered big tech companies and the tech workforce for the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Allison grew up in the Bay Area and graduated from UC Berkeley.
Power
Activision Blizzard scrambles to repair its toxic image
Blizzard President J. Allen Brack is the first executive to depart amid the sexual harassment crisis.
Activision Blizzard doesn't seem committed to lasting change.
Photo: Allen J. Schaben/Getty Images
August 3, 2021
Nick Statt is Protocol's video game reporter. Prior to joining Protocol, he was news editor at The Verge covering the gaming industry, mobile apps and antitrust out of San Francisco, in addition to managing coverage of Silicon Valley tech giants and startups. He now resides in Rochester, New York, home of the garbage plate and, completely coincidentally, the World Video Game Hall of Fame. He can be reached at nstatt@protocol.com.
August 3, 2021
As Activision Blizzard's workplace crisis rages on into its third week, the company is taking measures to try to calm the storm — to little avail. On Tuesday, Blizzard President J. Allen Brack, who took the reins at the developer responsible for World of Warcraft back in 2018, resigned. He's to be replaced by executives Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra, who will co-lead the studio in a power-sharing agreement some believe further solidifies CEO Bobby Kotick's control over the subsidiary.
Nowhere in Blizzard's statement about Brack's departure does it mention California's explosive sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuit at the heart of the saga. The lawsuit, filed last month, resulted last week in a 500-person walkout at Blizzard's headquarters in Irvine. (Among the attendees was none other than Ybarra, the new studio co-head.)
Activision Blizzard so far appears uncommitted to lasting change. The company has made numerous empty gestures aimed at placating employee concerns and salvaging a falling stock price. Many of them seem self-serving.
- Company management offered employees paid time off to participate in the walkout, giving it an air of corporate sponsorship that walkout organizers were specifically trying to avoid. Meanwhile, the company has hired a law firm known for its union-busting efforts. Walkout organizers, now calling themselves the ABK Workers Alliance, have since released a statement condemning the hiring of WilmerHale.
- Controversies surrounding Fran Townsend, the company's executive vice president for corporate affairs, continue to pile up. In the wake of the lawsuit, Townsend sent an email to employees dismissing the allegations as "meritless" and "untrue." The executive then tweeted an Atlantic story criticizing whistleblowers and began blocking Activision Blizzard employees for sounding off in her replies.
- Kotick sent a letter to employees last week in which he called the company's initial defensive response to the lawsuit "tone deaf," yet only after the company's stock price began tumbling. Activision Blizzard shares are down more than 15% since early July.
Stories of misconduct continue to pour out. The initial wave of revelations following news of the lawsuit involved shocking stories, including the so-called "Cosby suite" of disgraced former Blizzard creative director Alex Afrasiabi. Now, as more in the industry continue to speak out, we're starting to see the fuller picture of toxic rot at the heart of Activision Blizzard's culture.
- An Activision IT worker admitted in 2018 to installing spy cameras in the women's bathroom in the company's Minnesota office. The employee, Tony Ray Nixon, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor privacy violation.
- Security engineer Emily Mitchell said at Black Hat 2015 that she was mocked and harassed by Blizzard employees at the company's own booth, in which she was asked whether she "liked to be penetrated," according to Waypoint. Black Hat has since banned Blizzard from sponsoring the conference.
- A shocking IGN report detailed how male Blizzard employees would often walk into the office's breastfeeding rooms without knocking and refuse to leave until asked. The company later put locks on the doors.
Activision Blizzard addressed the ongoing crisis in its Q2 2021 earnings report and investor call on Tuesday. "Our work environment, everywhere we operate, will not permit discrimination harassment or unequal treatment. We will be the company that sets the example for this in our industry," Kotick said in the opening of the call.
- The company released a statement as part of its earnings report titled "Commitment to a Safe Work Environment," and California's lawsuit was added to its list of risk factors: "If we experience prolonged periods of adverse publicity, significantly reduced productivity or other negative consequences relating to this matter, our business likely would be adversely impacted."
- Just minutes prior to the call, Bloomberg reported that Jesse Meschuk, the company's SVP of Global Human Resources, is no longer with the company.
- Activision Blizzard was hit with a class action lawsuit on Tuesday filed on behalf of investors over its failure to disclose its ongoing sexual harassment and discrimination issues, Kotaku reported. This second lawsuit, from the Rosen Law Firm, could further complicate the company's attempts to shelter its lucrative business from the ongoing workplace issues.
. Despite sorrowful apologies from former company leaders, current management at Activision Blizzard has been tight-lipped. When execs have spoken out, they've often been combative and dismissive. That's beginning to change, as we saw on the investor call. But the company has yet to acknowledge any of the demands made by organizers of last week's walkout, including an end to the forced arbitration agreements that have helped guard many of the company's worst workplace abuses.
Perhaps Activision Blizzard management hopes this will all blow over in time to announce this year's annual Call of Duty game later this summer. But that's wishful thinking. There's no indication the storm is subsiding, and employees who attended last week's walkout now say, "This is the beginning of an enduring movement." That doesn't end with just one executive falling on the sword.
Update: This story was updated to include details from Activision Blizzard's Q2 2021 earnings report and investor call.
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Nick Statt is Protocol's video game reporter. Prior to joining Protocol, he was news editor at The Verge covering the gaming industry, mobile apps and antitrust out of San Francisco, in addition to managing coverage of Silicon Valley tech giants and startups. He now resides in Rochester, New York, home of the garbage plate and, completely coincidentally, the World Video Game Hall of Fame. He can be reached at nstatt@protocol.com.
Protocol | Workplace
Alabama Amazon workers will likely get a second union vote
An NLRB judge said that Amazon "usurped" the NLRB by pushing for a mailbox to be installed in front of its facility, and also that the company violated laws that protect workers from monitoring of their behavior during union elections.
An NLRB judge ruled that Amazon has violated union election rules
Image: Amazon
August 3, 2021
Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (Twitter: @ anna_c_kramer, email: akramer@protocol.com), where she writes about labor and workplace issues. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.
August 3, 2021
Bessemer, Alabama warehouse workers will likely get a second union vote because of Amazon's efforts to have a USPS ballot box installed just outside of the Bessemer warehouse facility during the mail-in vote, as well as other violations of union vote rules, according to an NLRB ruling published Tuesday morning.
While union organizers, represented by the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union, lost the first vote by more than a 2:1 margin, a second election will be scheduled and held unless Amazon successfully appeals the ruling. Though Amazon is the country's second-largest private employer, no unionization effort at the company has ever been successful.
NLRB hearing officer Kerstin Meyers sustained seven of the RWDSU's objections to Amazon's conduct during the months-long mail-in union election in early 2021, and said that those seven objections were severe enough to merit a second election.
In one objection filed by the RWDSU, the hearing officer ruled that the company's distribution of materials like "vote no" tags at small meetings and in the presence of managers could reasonably make a worker feel like Amazon was trying to determine whether they supported the union effort. Nearly all of the members of the union bargaining unit were subject to this misconduct because the meetings were mandatory and conducted an untold number of times, according to Meyers.
The other six objections sustained by Meyers all related to Amazon's efforts to have a USPS mailbox installed at the entrance to the facility. "The Employer's conduct in causing this generic mail receptacle to be installed usurped the National Labor Relations Board's (Board or NLRB) exclusive role in administering Union elections. Notwithstanding the Union's substantial margin of defeat, the Employer's unilateral decision to create, for all intents and purposes, an onsite collection box for NLRB ballots destroyed the laboratory conditions and justifies a second election," Meyers wrote in her ruling.
Amazon plans to appeal the ruling. "Our employees had a chance to be heard during a noisy time when all types of voices were weighing into the national debate, and at the end of the day, they voted overwhelmingly in favor of a direct connection with their managers and the company," an Amazon spokesperson told Protocol via email. "Their voice should be heard above all else, and we plan to appeal to ensure that happens."
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Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (Twitter: @ anna_c_kramer, email: akramer@protocol.com), where she writes about labor and workplace issues. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.
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