Little visible and unaccustomed to protest and demands, Ubisoft employees began a three-day strike this Tuesday at the various studios of the French video game publisher, in Paris, Lyon, Montpellier and Annecy. According to the STJV, the union of video game workers, more than 700 people out of the 4,000 employees at Ubisoft in France followed this strike movement.
In Haute-Savoie as elsewhere, the straw that broke the camel’s back was the desire revealed at the beginning of October by Ubisoft management to reduce teleworking introduced five years ago and to bring back employees in the office three days a week instead of two currently.
A disguised social plan
In Annecy, in front of the Ubisoft studio established in the Galbert district in the city center for almost 28 years, around fifty people maintained a strike picket all day Tuesday. Disillusioned men and women who feel more and more every day that they are negligible quantities pushed towards the exit.
“Today here we are a little less than 300 here“, explains Alexandre Berneau, the STJV delegate in Annecy. “In two years, we lost 10% of the workforce. Voluntary departures or rather provoked by penalizing measures and non-existent social dialogue. Salaries lower than inflation, profit sharing that is not increasing and there, teleworking which is decreasing. Those who came to Annecy because there were three days of remote working and who live far away, these will not come to Annecy where living and housing are very expensive, they will leave. And that’s a disguised social plan.”.
This strike could be renewed since a cycle of negotiations on salaries, teleworking and gender equality is about to begin and if the dialogue is not fruitful, the STJV says it is ready to start again.
