Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios Group has pledged to sign a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with its unionized workers…though the signing itself won’t happen for another year.
Avalanche Studios employees first began contract bargaining with management last fall, following a history of collective action at the studio, but many of them had been union members for much longer. Union membership in Sweden is a bit different than United States union membership. In Sweden, most workers are allowed to join a trade union that represents their line of work at any time. Union members receive some benefits automatically, such as unemployment insurance and career advice, regardless of whether or not others in their workplace have joined that union.
As a result, union membership in Sweden is high (around 70% of the country), and the unions are able to influence national laws governing minimum wage, sick leave, and other working conditions. But employees can also elect to form a union “club” within individual workplaces, and if enough members join, they can choose to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement directly with their company that offers further protections.
Avalanche Studios Group Union chairman Love Arvidsson tells me despite the popularity of unions in Sweden, the games industry in the country is running a bit behind on adopting them. But it’s starting to catch up. Last October, over 100 developers at Avalanche Studios announced that they had formed a union club at the company through Swedish union Unionen. Other employees similarly had joined a different union, Sveriges Ingenjörer (Engineers of Sweden). Together, the group asked to bargain with Avalanche management over a collective agreement that would grant them even more rights and protections in the workplace. Avalanche accepted, becoming a part of employer organization Almega, and negotiations between all involved groups have been ongoing since then.
Many of the benefits of such a contract, Arvidsson says, are what you might expect: there’s a good pension increase, improvements to sick pay and parental pay, and others. And both Arvidsson and Avalanche confirmed to IGN that a number of the benefits in the CBA are ones the company already offers, or very close to them. But the most important benefit for many at Avalanche is something called co-determination. Essentially, this forces Avalanche management to negotiate certain organizational changes with the union before making them, such as the appointment of new executives, large layoffs, and others. Additionally, the union gets at least one seat on the Avalanche board of directors, voting power and all. Essentially, it gives the workers of Avalanche a meaningful and legally protected voice in how their company is run.
This voice is especially critical to Avalanche workers because of the environment that led them to unionize in the first place. Arvidsson explains that the workers felt there had been “various systemic issues” at Avalanche that had created, over time, dissatisfaction with management.
“It’s more like a series of small things and some big things, where there’s been a general feeling that management has not felt compelled to listen to and take into account the feelings and the opinions of the employees, and we didn’t really see that improving,” Arvidsson says. “That feedback was also given to management. And management, a lot of the time, had the response of, ‘Our doors are open, just come and talk to us whenever you want.’ And a lot of people were like, ‘We did come and talk to you and you didn’t do anything, so this relationship is not working.’
“So I think that was the main reason, we decided if they’re not going to voluntarily listen to the workers, then we will organize, and then they will legally be forced to listen to us, because we’ll have that legally-protected influence in the company.”
Agreement, Deferred
After several months of negotiations, the union’s negotiations with Avalanche have been successful. Mostly.
As Arvidsson explains, the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that Avalanche is being asked to sign onto isn’t an outlandish one. In fact, it’s a standard bargaining agreement that numerous other companies and unions agree to, with the option to additionally sign a local bargaining agreement at a later date that includes more specific provisions. But Avalanche has been taking its time deciding whether or not to sign it, and Arvidsson says he walked into negotiations on April 10 unsure whether or not he’d have to organize a strike. Fortunately, he didn’t, but he didn’t walk out with a signed contract, either. The good news for workers is that Avalanche has committed to signing the CBA.
“As a Swedish-founded company, Avalanche’s values are well-aligned with the Nordic model, wherein CBAs provide a longstanding framework for constructive relations between employers and employees,” said Petra Skoglund, interim chief HR officer at Avalanche, in a statement to IGN. “We consider this step a natural progression in our growth journey. Over the past years, we’ve made significant strides toward making Avalanche one of the best workplaces in the gaming industry. Entering negotiations to implement a CBA in Sweden underscores our commitment to this goal. We’re dedicated to being an exciting yet stable employer for top gaming talent everywhere we operate – and for Sweden, this path made sense to us.”
The bad news is that the company wants to wait until Q2 of 2025 to do it.
We consider this step a natural progression in our growth journey.Per Skoglund, the reasons for wanting to hold off are largely administrative. Because CBAs are so general and cover multiple companies, they typically have a validity period between one to three years, after which they are renegotiated for everyone. Currently, they are smack in the middle of one of those periods. Avalanche wants to enter the agreement at the start of the next validity period rather than entering now, and immediately changing the agreement a year later.
“The time frame allows us to have a dialogue with Avalanchers about what it means to be covered by a CBA,” says Skoglund. “Our leaders, in particular, will receive training to ensure they are set up to succeed, and the many Avalanchers in Sweden who have international backgrounds (some 40 countries are represented just in Stockholm and Malmö!) may be unfamiliar with the Swedish CBA model. We see this time frame as a great opportunity to bring everyone up to speed.”
In our conversation, Arvidsson acknowledges Avalanche’s reasoning has some merit to it. Because of Swedish laws and the content of the CBA, he continues, it does take some work to set up the internal systems needed to comply with what Avalanche is about to sign, and gaming companies especially can be less equipped to handle that due to the industry’s overall lack of union experience. But Arvidsson adds that he’d normally expect to wait a few months, maybe half a year – a full year is a long time to hold off such an agreement, and says the workers are “disappointed” that Avalanche wants to delay it this long.
“It’s not great. It would’ve been better if they had committed to signing earlier and then if they felt that they needed some time for transitionary stuff, like they weren’t sure that they would be able to comply with the agreement properly, we could just all agree to chill,” he says. “Because we’re going to be learning as well. It’s not like we know how to do all of this stuff, either.”
Filled With Co-Determination
On the bright side, Avalanche has made other concessions that take effect now. The company has committed to acting as if it is bound to participate in co-determination, and has promised to negotiate with the union and allow the workers to be more involved in various internal processes. “It would be better if they were legally bound to this, because at the end of the day, this is the thing that they’re saying,” Arvidsson says. “It’s noted in an official protocol and it’s something that they have committed to, but it is not something that they are legally bound to comply with. But it’s better than nothing.”
It’s a major step forward for Avalanche, which has had at least one studio-shaking issue in the past few years where workers expressed deep dissatisfaction with the lack of company transparency. Skoglund acknowledges that the company had room to improve after that inflection point, and asserts that giving employees a legally-recognized voice is just one part of that.
“The union club members have confirmed that it’s one of their main priorities and we welcome their commitment, as this is one of the ways we can improve as a company and employer,” Skoglund says. “The Swedish CBA framework provides standardized ways to exercise employee influence, which we hope will contribute toward making Avalanche one of the best workplaces in the games industry.”
But even if they have to wait a year for the CBA to become official, the unionized employees are still able to hold Avalanche to account. In Sweden, workers have a right to strike, but they waive it if they are covered by a collective bargaining agreement. Because Avalanche’s union doesn’t have such an agreement yet, the right to strike is still on the table if the company doesn’t fulfill its promises to the workers.
The unionized workers won’t be idle while they wait for Avalanche to sign the CBA, either. Avalanche management wants to come to the table and go over the entire agreement with the union, line by line. The company might try to negotiate removing certain elements from the CBA that it doesn’t want, and in return, the union might ask for additional benefits that matter to the workforce. Arvidsson tells me at the top of everyone’s minds lately is better work-life balance. Avalanche workers have been floating the idea of either a four-day work week, or six-hour days instead of eight. And they’re also hoping to contractually counter an unpopular Swedish law where employees calling in sick aren’t paid at all for the first day of absence.
Avalanche management’s commitment to a CBA is probably not earth-shattering news in the context of Swedish unions and their history. Skoglund calls the announcement “significant but not dramatic,” given that Avalanche’s owners, sister companies, and other industry colleagues all have CBAs already in place. But it does come alongside a growing labor movement in the wider global games industry that includes Sega, Workinman Interactive, Blizzard Albany, Raven Software, Zenimax QA, Activision QA, and video game voice actors. In that context, Avalanche workers have accomplished a major milestone, with hopefully more to come.
Despite the asterisks on the timeline, Arvidsson says he feels “mostly positive” about what the union has achieved.
“I think that the company has generally been very transparent and very honest with us, and there hasn’t been any major breach of trust and definitely nothing that has ever been felt like it was due to malice, rather than just miscommunication,” he says. “So at the moment, it would’ve been nice if they had just signed on or decided that we were going to sign in three or six months or whatever. But at the end of the day, I believe them when they say that they’re going to sign in next year, and I am looking forward to continuing collaboration with them.”
