Activision Blizzard employees respond to CEO’s statement: ‘We will not return to silence’
Activision Blizzard employee organization group has responded to the email CEO Bobby Kotick sent on July 27 over the allegations surfaced from the California state lawsuit.
Kotick stated that the executive team’s initial response was “tone deaf” and vowed to work together with employees on correcting the mishaps after receiving intense backlash from the company’s employees.
The employee group has responded saying that his response failed “to address critical elements at the heart of employee concerns.”
The statement demands action on the four major points of changes that Activision Blizzard employees want to see, including end of forced arbitration and changes to employee hiring and promotion practices.
It further states that “we will not return to silence; we will not be placated by the same processes that led us to this point.”
The statement from the employee group is below, shared by Axios:
On the evening before our employee walkout, Activision Blizzard leadership released a statement apologizing for their harmful responses to last week’s DFEH lawsuit. While we are pleased to see that our collective voices — including an open letter with thousands of signatures from current employees — have convinced leadership to change the tone of their communications, this response fails to address critical elements at the heart of employee concerns.
Activision Blizzard’s response did not address the following:
The end of forced arbitration for all employees.
Worker participation in oversight of hiring and promotion policies.
The need for greater pay transparency to ensure equality.
Employee selection of a third party to audit HR and other company processes.
Today’s walkout will demonstrate that this is not a one-time event that our leaders can ignore. We will not return to silence; we will not be placated by the same processes that led us to this point.
This is the beginning of an enduring movement in favor of better labor conditions for all employees, especially women, in particular women of color and transgender women, nonbinary people, and other marginalized groups.
We expect a prompt response and a commitment to action from leadership on the points enumerated above, and look forward to maintaining a constructive dialogue on how to build a better Activision Blizzard for all employees.
Today, we stand up for change. Tomorrow and beyond, we will be the change.
Whether Activision Blizzard executives have plans for the above changes remains to be seen. Over 2,600 employees of the company are participating in the Activision Blizzard walkout on July 28, with #ActiBlizzWalkout trending on Twitter.
The movement encourages all employees to not work on July 28 in protest of the company’s executive responses to the lawsuit and allegations.