Hi MRGS,

Hope you're all enjoying the holiday season. I wanted to write a short post asking if anyone else working in the Games Industry has encountered labour issues similar to those I'm encountering myself (which I'll outline below in a moment). Mostly looking for solidarity and support at the moment, though any legal and/or general advice would be greatly appreciated as well.
I had been working on and off for a large video game services outsourcing company for the last five years. I'd always received positive evaluations about the quality of my work from my peers and direct supervisors, though this never translated into any kind of qualitative or quantitative gain from managers or human resources. This past spring, I began making inquiries into how the company I worked for might go about improving the lives of their employees.
This included, among other suggestions, whether it would be possible for those working under contracts (roughly 80-90% of the work force) to be offered basic group health insurance, whether they might obtain shares of the publicly traded multinational who bought the company's stock (and who's profits have risen more than 400% since doing so), how to obtain more transparency about the promotion process and achieving more stable/permanent employment, to smaller issues that employees had been complaining about for years like basic sanitation and malfunctioning/in-adequate heating and air conditioning problems in the office. I even had the (stupidly, perhaps—in retrospect) nerve to ask if they would consider consulting their employees about the possibility of forming an enterprise union at the office.
The first repercussion for these perceived slights I suffered was being taken off the AAA title I had been working on, and shifted to a different, more menial project on the night shift. Still, I persisted in my writing to my superiors with questions aimed at improving the health and job security of my co-workers...always politely and formerly, and never making any demands, simply asking questions and pointing out things I thought (and still do think) were a good idea. After all, a company is only as good as the people who work for it, and my—perhaps naive—thought was that improved worker health and happiness could only lead to improved productivity and success for the company.
A few weeks later I received my letter of termination at my door, citing unspecified policy violations and, “expressing discontent with the workplace environment,” as the reason for my firing. I was disturbed, to say the least, but all of my appeals were ignored or dismissed without further explanation. I filed a wrongful termination complaint with the CNESST, and after a few months and several phone calls later, now do have a date for a mediation meeting in the near future.
I was out of work for several months, but eventually landed a new job at another video game services company in the city. I've only been working there for a few weeks, but was just starting to get into the flow of a new job and new workplace. Imagine my dismay, when this morning I was ambushed in a meeting (I don't use the word ambushed lightly, as I had no indication of who my suddenly scheduled meeting at the end of my five days of overnight shifts was with) by two HR personal from the afor mentioned multinational corporation.
Said corporation had also recently acquired the company I had just begun working for, and I was terminated again, this time with the even more vague explanation of an, “administrative decision.” Basically, I was fired for having previously been fired...and, I imagine, for having my previously mentioned wrongful dismissal complaint still being in the works. When I asked whether or not other employees who had previously been terminated by the parent corporation had also been terminated for the same reason, they cited confidentiality.
I am deeply saddened and disheartened, though unfortunately not surprised by these events, and am wondering how others who have been in similar situations have dealt with everything this entails. I love video games deeply, and have since I was very young. That's not going to change, but my dreams and goals of working in this industry have certainly taken a significant blow, not to mention my finances and mental health. If anyone has any opinions of any kind relating the what I've just written, I would encourage you to share them. It is my feeling that a massive segment of people working in this industry are being unfairly taken advantage of in a multitude of ways. I have felt for some time, and these recent events in my own life have only solidified this feeling, that there is real need for progressive movement on labour issues in the video game industry, and in Montreal especially.
Thank you kindly for taking the time out of your day to read this letter, and happy and healthy holidays and coming 2018 to you all.

Yours sincerely,