Rockstar has been accused of union busting, but the company says the fired employees were "distributing and discussing confidential information in a public forum"
“The CEO said in a meeting that they want to use AI to replace QA”
This sounds like it would be on the edge if the company is publicly traded and there’s a chance that information wasn’t communicated to investors, especially for something like video games where launch bugs could make or break initial impression and thus sales.
“Wanna hear about this cool bug I found today?”
This is probably fine if it’s unreleased and has been fixed. It’s probably not fine if it’s in a released product and hasn’t been fixed.
For sure, definitely be extra careful when organizing outside of the ways sanctioned by the company. In fact, I recommend not keeping any records about anything that goes on in the company, and keep union discussions about the union itself. If you want to recruit people, talk about how you’d like the relationship between the union and company to be, not about things the company is doing that you don’t like, because there’s a huge risk of giving the company a valid reason to fire you.
I’m more talking about what’s generally protected legally and what’s not. Again, if you’re looking to form a union, don’t get anywhere near that line.
Talking about issues surrounding work outside of the workplace is not an NDA violation.
In this scenario I’m assuming they were talking about project specifics, which would absolutely be covered.
I’m not sure about other industries, but in games NDAs and similar restrictive contract clauses tend to be extremely strict and often quite broad.
I know, I’ve helped successfully form a large union within the video games industry. NDAs can only cover the work itself.
allowed:
not allowed:
This sounds like it would be on the edge if the company is publicly traded and there’s a chance that information wasn’t communicated to investors, especially for something like video games where launch bugs could make or break initial impression and thus sales.
This is probably fine if it’s unreleased and has been fixed. It’s probably not fine if it’s in a released product and hasn’t been fixed.
Trust me on this one, we used similar organizing techniques for issues like these. The line is thin, but lined with landmines.
For sure, definitely be extra careful when organizing outside of the ways sanctioned by the company. In fact, I recommend not keeping any records about anything that goes on in the company, and keep union discussions about the union itself. If you want to recruit people, talk about how you’d like the relationship between the union and company to be, not about things the company is doing that you don’t like, because there’s a huge risk of giving the company a valid reason to fire you.
I’m more talking about what’s generally protected legally and what’s not. Again, if you’re looking to form a union, don’t get anywhere near that line.