Despite an increasing turnover, the salary increases proposed by management for two years are “well below inflation”, denounce the unions on France Culture.
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Employees of Ubisoft, the largest French video game studio, are expected to go on strike on Wednesday February 14, France Culture learned from a union source. Three unions, Solidaire Informatique, STJV (Video Game Workers Union) and the FIECI CFE-CGC Federation, are demanding an increase in wages in line with inflation.
The union organizations believe that they were not heard during the last annual negotiations. “It appeared that we were ready to negotiate, but that a decision was already more or less established”, regrets at the microphone of France Culture Pierre-Étienne Marx, delegate within the Union of Video Game Workers at Ubisoft. The union representative thus denounces an insufficient salary increase: “For the second year in a row, we have a proposed increase well below inflation,” and even “lower [au pourcentage] from last year”, he maintains. The unions point out that the French video games giant nevertheless achieved an increase in turnover in the first half.
“Many people are there out of passion” but it risks disappearing
Faced with this situation, the three unions are therefore calling on all Ubisoft employees for a day of mobilization on Wednesday. And this date was not chosen at random, explains Pierre-Étienne Marx. “It is a little symbolic, because it is a day linked to passion and in video games many people are there out of passion”, insists the trade unionist. He also believes that it is surely out of passion that employees “often agree to have salaries easily 10 to 20% lower than what they could earn with this kind of level of diploma in other industries”.
But Pierre-Étienne Marx fears that this passion for the profession will disappear little by little “because we are in a big company that orders things that are not necessarily linked to people’s creative expectations”and due to “treatment of employees, because obviously we cannot even compensate for our loss of salary in relation to inflation”.
