Every time there's a thread about anything employment related with the games industry Gaffers get all pro union: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1326489 as someone who works in the games industry I don't really understand it and no one I ever worked with was interested in a union.
GAF doesn't really get the job hopping aspect of the industry and similar ones in the West. (And increasingly the Glorious Nippon.) Most the people they latch onto are management in some form.
Fuck, let alone all the contracting.
There's plenty of guilds and unions for what amounts to contracted, freelance work (writers, cinematographers, actors) so I don't think that's a really valid counterpoint, though being unfamiliar with the precise history of those guilds, they might have been created in the studio Golden Age, when employment was both more stable and exacting. Film industry in the US is much more concentrated in a couple of key locations too. You can't just wish it to exist, setting up an union is work.
as someone who works in the games industry I don't really understand it and no one I ever worked with was interested in a union.
Wouldn't you be, though, if an union already existed and membership would guarantee mandatory early wage minimums ?
But games aren't all made on with the same financial model, especially not these days and they aren't nearly as easy to compartmentalize as manufacturing or film. That's the thing that I feel like people don't understand about software development. You can't subdivide things in the same way you can with other stuff, no matter how much six sigma black belts and scrum masters try.
But a union would be able to mandate set hours of work and overtime/crunch to not be overwhelming for employees. Employees would be able to see their kids and a union would be able to at least try to help the folks in the industry find another job/hop to another job as a safety net if a studio goes belly up, wouldn't it?
I mean think of it this way: Wouldn't you want to prevent another EA_Spouse (which is
thankfully better than it was but still bad in terms of working conditions for folks in the industry), and forgetting the article where this guy blindly chased the industry while his kids were growing up, having to move around like military brats AND budget like hell because he wasn't making enough/having a stable job?
