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TESA Collective (Toolbox for Education and Social Action) is a worker-owned co-op that designs games and tools for social justice organizations. TESA consciously engages in ethical, social change practices that intend to create healthier communities. [1]
Creating and publishing games that address issues of social and economic change is a growing trend. [2] TESA develops projects ranging from board games, to documentaries, to interactive webinars. [3] In cooperative games, everyone wins or everyone loses.
Co-opoly is a board game that teaches players the ins and outs of negotiating a Cooperative business. [4]
In Rise Up: The Game of People and Power, players build a social movement and take on an oppressive system. [5]
Space Cats Fight Fascism is the fourth in a series of social justice games from the TESA Collective. [6]
TESA Collective and Jobs with Justice funded a labor organizing game on Kickstarter. In STRIKE!: The Game of Worker Rebellion, players grow their ranks, mobilize workers, and organize strikes around their city. The campaign for the game ran during a union drive at Kickstarter. [7]
Labour laws, labour code or employment laws are those that mediate the relationship between workers, employing entities, trade unions, and the government. Collective labour law relates to the tripartite relationship between employee, employer, and union.
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), nicknamed "Wobblies", is an international labor union founded in Chicago in 1905. The nickname's origin is uncertain. Its ideology combines general unionism with industrial unionism, as it is a general union, subdivided between the various industries which employ its members. The philosophy and tactics of the IWW are described as "revolutionary industrial unionism", with ties to socialist, syndicalist, and anarchist labor movements.
A cooperative is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-controlled enterprise". Cooperatives are democratically controlled by their members, with each member having one vote in electing the board of directors. Cooperatives may include:
The nature and power of organized labor in the United States is the outcome of historical tensions among counter-acting forces involving workplace rights, wages, working hours, political expression, labor laws, and other working conditions. Organized unions and their umbrella labor federations such as the AFL–CIO and citywide federations have competed, evolved, merged, and split against a backdrop of changing values and priorities, and periodic federal government intervention.
Jobs With Justice (JWJ) is a labor rights organization in the United States, focused on the vision that all workers should be able to collectively bargain. It was founded in 1987 and is made up of individuals and affiliated organizations. As of 2022, Jobs With Justice coalitions existed in over 30 cities or states in all regions of the country. In 2012 Jobs With Justice announced a merger with American Rights at Work, another U.S. union advocate organization. Jobs With Justice is based in Washington, D.C., and is led by Executive Director Erica Smiley.
Cooperative economics is a field of economics that incorporates cooperative studies and political economy toward the study and management of cooperatives.
Peter Kellman is a lifelong trade union activist who participated in the Civil rights and Anti-war movements of the 1960s, the anti-nuclear/safe-energy, environmental movements of the 1970/80s and is currently part of the New Agriculture Movement of the twenty-first century. He has lived most of his life in Maine. His mother brought him to his first picket line in a baby carriage at a bank where workers were striking management for not recognizing their union. It was the bank Kellman’s Grandfather used, but not that day.
The Martin Luther King, Jr. County Labor Council (MLKCLC) is the central body of labor organizations in King County, Washington. The MLKCLC is affiliated with the national AFL–CIO, the central labor organization in the United States, which represents more than 13 million working people. Over 125 organizations are affiliated with the MLKCLC, and more than 75,000 working men and women belong to Council-affiliated organizations. Not only does the MLKCLC support labor organizations, but it acts as a voice for the interests and needs of the working people in King County, WA.
Economic democracy is a socioeconomic philosophy that proposes to shift ownership and decision-making power from corporate shareholders and corporate managers to a larger group of public stakeholders that includes workers, consumers, suppliers, communities and the broader public. No single definition or approach encompasses economic democracy, but most proponents claim that modern property relations externalize costs, subordinate the general well-being to private profit and deny the polity a democratic voice in economic policy decisions. In addition to these moral concerns, economic democracy makes practical claims, such as that it can compensate for capitalism's inherent effective demand gap.
Playbour is a hybrid form of play and labour, specifically in the digital games industry.
Emma Kinema is an American labor organizer and the senior campaign lead of CODE-CWA, the Communication Workers of America's Campaign to Organize Digital Employees. In the late 2010s, while working as a quality assurance tester, Kinema volunteered as a games industry organizer and co-founder of Game Workers Unite. She was hired by the CWA union in 2020 to lead their initiative to organize video game and tech workers, the first American initiative of its kind in those sectors.
Game Workers Unite is a worker-run, labor rights group seeking to organize the video game industry. Founded during events surrounding the March 2018 Game Developers Conference, the flat organization has grown to over a thousand members across more than 20 international chapters. Its goal is a single union for all games workers, including artists, designers, producers, and programmers. Game Workers Unite has supported actions including Riot Games's 2019 walkout over sex discrimination and social media campaigns against CEOs who executed layoffs. The British chapter of Game Workers Unite is legally recognized as a union within the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain and is working to end crunch overtime practices, improve diversity and inclusion, support targeted workers, and ensure steady and fair wages. Game Workers Unite co-founder Emma Kinema was hired by the Communications Workers of America to organize workers in the high tech and video game industries in early 2020, the first American initiative of its kind in those sectors.
Some warehouse workers of Amazon, the largest American e-commerce retailer with 750,000 employees, have organized for workplace improvements in light of the company's scrutinized labor practices and stance against unions. Worker actions have included work stoppages and have won concessions including increased pay, safety precautions, and time off. There are unionized Amazon workers in both the United States and Europe.
Spirit Island is a euro-style co-operative strategy board game designed by R. Eric Reuss and published by Greater Than Games in 2017. Digital versions have been released for PC, iOS, and Android.
A tech union is a trade union for tech workers typically employed in high tech or information and communications technology sectors. Due to the evolving nature of technology and work, different government agencies have conflicting definitions for who is a tech worker. Most definitions include computer scientists, people working in IT, telecommunications, media and video gaming. Broader definitions include all workers required for a tech company to operate, including on-site service staff, contractors, and platform economy workers.
The Campaign to Organize Digital Employees or CODE-CWA is a project launched by the Communications Workers of America to unionize tech and video game workers in January 2020. It sprung out of conversations with Game Workers Unite (GWU) and employed at least two full time staff, including GWU co-founder Emma Kinema and veteran SEIU organizer Wes McEnany. In 2022, Jessica Gonzalez joined, a former Activision Blizzard QA tester.
ABK Workers Alliance is a group of organized workers from video game company Activision Blizzard. Formed in response to a July 2021 state lawsuit against the company for harassment and discriminatory work practices, the worker advocacy group A Better ABK organized walkouts and demonstrations against the company's policy and practices. The quality assurance workers of subsidiary Raven Software went on strike in December after part of the team was fired. The striking workers announced their union as the Game Workers Alliance in late January 2022 and offered to end the strike pending their union's recognition.
Workers at Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI), an American retail and outdoor recreation services co-op, have one recognized trade union. The company has faced accusations of being anti-union. In 2016, REI workers went public with organization efforts that had been growing over concerns about wages and working conditions in the Pacific Northwest, and the company has since faced increasing public criticism from its employees nationwide over issues including living wages, hourly worker policies, and safety protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic. Workers have organized at least five petitions since 2016. REI has maintained that it is committed to adjusting and improving working conditions for its employees.
Jurassic World: The Legacy of Isla Nublar is a legacy board game, the first to be developed by Funko's design division, Prospero Hall. It is based on the first five films in the Jurassic Park franchise. After years in development, the game was announced in September 2021. It was launched as a Kickstarter project six months later, and quickly achieved its $100,000 fundraising goal. It was released in October 2022. Early reception was generally positive.