Lulu Cheng Meservey has been on the job for less than a month, and the Activision executive has already upset employees at the center of a long-awaited union organizing drive in the games industry. After more than a dozen Blizzard QA testers won the right to hold a union vote in November, Meservey warned staff via Slack that the organization could lead to lower raises and tough run-ins with management. A screenshot of the comment reached Twitter, someone accused Meservey of pushing right-wing talking points, and she’s been posting it ever since.
“We think collective bargaining is relatively slow – once the agreement is in place, it takes on average over a year according to Bloomberg analysis,” Meservey said in the company’s Slack on Oct. 18, a screenshot of which was shared on Twitter by former Activision employee Jessica Gonzalez. “During lengthy contract negotiations, labor law prohibits companies from granting raises/bonuses/benefits without a special agreement with the union, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that non-union employees typically get raises wages than the employees represented by the union. groups.”
The post came hot on the heels of the workers’ initial victory at Blizzard Albany. It was the latest attempt by the company to discourage any other workers from unionizing after losing its latest case with the National Labor Relations Board. As the Washington Postby Shannon Liao reported, although Meservey called for “direct dialogue” with employees rather than through a union, most employees were barred from commenting directly on the channel. Instead, “she encountered negative emoticons.”
“I can hear the boos from here!” Meservey responded according to Liao. “And recorded the disappointed dog emojis.”
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But the boos persisted on social media as the interaction made the rounds on Twitter. “lol just found out that Substack’s right wing PR hack left to fight unions for Activision Blizzard”, digital media creator Matt Binder wrote in a quote-tweet of Liao’s report on the exchange.
“I’m curious what makes me right wing? » Meservey replied in a tweet that was quickly shared. Binder re-shared his original quote tweet, and Meservey made a second round and was ratio’d again.
“Which party is on the right? ” she wrote. “Really curious. Or do you mean that the left is associated with the unions, and therefore everything that questions the unions is therefore right? »
“Yes. Correct,” tweeted Defector co-founder Tom Ley.
Meservey was hiring as Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Chief Communications Officer of Activision just two weeks ago. Before that, she made a short stint on the publisher’s board of directors on her workplace responsibility committeea group formed in response to allegations of widespread sexual harassment and discrimination in the company, and only a few days after a the wall street journal article reported that CEO Bobby Kotick was aware of at least some of the sexual misconduct issues.
However, the new executive is known to have tweeted through him. While still VP of Substack, the newsletter platform known for courting writers who got canceled everywhere else, Meservey infamous tweeted that Twitter employees uncomfortable with Elon Musk’s plans for the platform need not apply. She later claimed that “context collapse“had led people to misinterpret the comment, and eventually downgraded it to a”light crush” which was blown out of proportion.
But Meservey’s penchant for antagonizing potential employees on social media may have made her an ideal candidate for her new role at Activision. Labor partially replaced the departure of Frances Townsenda Bush-era torture apologist who tweeted an anti-whistleblower article amid Activision Blizzard employee walkouts over an internal email she sent that was dismissing sexual misconduct allegations against the company. The email was later discovered to have been written by Kotick, but in the meantime Townsend came under fire, began blocking employees on Twitter, and eventually ended up temporarily taking down his entire account.
Time will tell if a similar fate awaits Meservey. Intermediate Promotion Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2of the upcoming Early Access launch, she took a moment today to correct someone about the company’s market cap. “It’s very funny to be an executive at a $50 billion company and say you’re ‘really curious’ if there’s anything political about opposing unionization,” he said. someone said. wrote to her on Twitter. “We are closer to 60 billion dollars,” she said. wrote return. That number is still $10 billion less than Activision was worth before it was hit. a historic trial for sexual harassment.
When asked to comment on the situation, Activision spokesman Rich George offered the following general statement about the debates within the company:
The union and the company are allowed to share their views on the pros and cons of unionization. We deeply respect the right of every eligible employee to decide to join a union and have their vote counted, which is why we have always believed that a small minority of employees should not be able to choose on behalf of all their colleagues.
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