Nintendo is no stranger to legal matters, for various reasons. However, they usually aren’t as big as this. You see, an unnamed worker has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, or NLRB. The complaint alleges that Nintendo, as well as a firm it uses for hiring contractors called Aston Carter, violated their legally protected right to unionize.
According to the complaint, filed on Friday, Nintendo and Aston Carter engaged in “concerted activities” and made “coercive actions” against the worker, and even interfering with their legally protected right to organize. The exact details are not clear, as the publicly released version of the complaint doesn’t include that. However, Axios speculates that the allegations may include “claims of surveillance, threats, retaliation and either a layoff or refusal to hire”.
The complaint was filed in Washington state. Since this is where Nintendo of America‘s headquarters are, it’s very likely that this is strictly an issue with Nintendo of America. According to Axios, Nintendo and Aston Carter didn’t respond to any requests for press comments at this time.
I knew this would happen when they put a guy named Bowser in charge.
Sounds like someone trying to stir up trouble for no reason, thinking because they work somewhere they have a right to choose the direction a company runs
It’s your right as a labourer to unionize.
Labourers have just the same right to decide how it is they wish to labour. Unionization generally brings about better pay, and better working conditions.
Keep the boot licking to the bedroom.
Unionization also allows for workers who work harder than their colleagues to be paid the same as those who less work just because they are part of a union.
Should be paid on your work ethic not your time worked
Oh please. This is a gross exaggeration of what happens in real life. Stop hating on your fellow coworkers and start hating on the companies that subject you to tiresome work for a pittance.
And businesses have the right to hire and fire employees who don’t perform. It’s a two-way street.
How you managed to make that assumption with so little information is beyond me.
We all knew this is going to happen from the start.
Many of you seem to have that capitalist rot in your brain.
Has being condescending every persuaded anyone to your point of view?
I’m not a logic debate bro.
There is a 0.1% that I change your mind about unions when the argument you present is a straw man of unions to begin with.
Also, you can hate unions all you want, but that doesn’t mean you should support a company preventing employees from organizing.
I didn’t present an argument.
I used to be for unions as a concept but after seeing so many companies ruined by employees abusing unions for alterior motives I’ve grown a pretty heavy stance against unions. Sure there are people who don’t abuse it but it’s definitely a case of the negatives outweighing the positives.
Receipts.
Sounds about nintendo. They rule with an iron outdated thumb !
This is why they take so long to ever make any changes on anything tbh.
Name the companies that have been “ruined” by unions.
Basically every friend or family member I know who joined a job that a Union took control of complains about it. The issue is that Unions where made at a time workers didn’t have much legal rights. Now we have all sorts of worker protection laws, so all that ends up happening is the people who start the union mooches up Union fees.
Why are people having an ideological debate about unions? It’s completely irrelevant to this – regardless of whether you like them or not Nintendo have no right to block unionisation, so if that’s what they’re doing, it’s unacceptable (and illegal). I hope it’s either not true, or if it is, they get taken to town over it.
Its a subjective criteria. Any company one could name, you would mockingly say they aren’t ruined, and the person making the claim would say that they are. Since you don’t have objective criteria, its a waste of time. If you’re interested in a discussion, and not simply attacking people who disagree with you, why don’t you give your definition for what would hypothetically qualify as a union having a negative net effect, then we can either agree or disagree on that being a reasonable standard, or see if such an example exists.
Not that its any of my business, I didn’t make the claim. My issue with unions isn’t the unions themselves, but that so many of the public’s reaction to them as evidenced in this comment thread. Lots of people take the attitude that anything and everything unions do is morally good, and factually correct. That’s nonsense, unions are made of humans. Its a nonsense that warps and distorts labor disputes, as large portions of the public automatically back unions no matter how reasonable or unreasonable that union’s demand may be. That undue political pressure puts companies in a permanently defensive position. Any buckling to even reasonable demands of a union could lead to being forced by public pressure to buckling to unreasonable demands. Ultimately the weight of unreasonable demands doesn’t “ruin the company”, because the company typically just leaves or stops existing if the conditions of the industry aren’t practical. No the weight of the unreasonable demands is on others, typically in the form of the new union backed wage structure screwing over some other sect of workers at the company. A big high profile example of this is the NFL. The NFLPA’s agreement with the NFL locks rookies out of making their justified earned wages for the first few years of their career, for the explicit purpose of preserving salary cap space for the veteran players who have more power within the union. Half the league is earning less than they should to prop up the wages of the union power players. The NFL sees no ramifications for these union demands, other workers do.
Thanks for sharing such information
The problem that we have is the federal government has drilled into people’s minds that if you don’t get paid like $20 an hour minimum. Regardless of skill level of job. Then the companies crap and you have all rights to complain or unionize. That you’re not getting paid a”livable wage”. Yet people should be looking at the federal government and how they’re screwing everybody on a daily basis. They’re trying to manipulate you by making them as not the problem and making the company the problem.
10 years ago nobody really complained about making $8-9 an hour. Now because we have the highest inflation ever, products are triple the price, gas prices are over $3.75 and just the overall price of living is through the roof. Everybody wants to complain that their company pays him like crap when it’s the federal government as I said before which is causing these problems. Manipulating you into thinking it’s the company that you work for problem not the federal government.
Anti Union scum, unsurprising given the company’s absolutely assbackwards policies and philosophies.
Its strictly an issue with Aston Carter. The worker in question does not work for Nintendo, at all, in any capacity. My sister used to personally handle the Nintendo account before they were with Aston Carter and that’s simply not how it works. Nintendo would not care if they unionize because as a union they could demand literally nothing of Nintendo itself. All of these workers get their paychecks not from Nintendo, but Aston Carter. Their wages are determined by Aston Carter. Their HR rep is with Aston Carter.
Not only is Nintendo wholly unrelated to any claims of unionization, but a union would be useless in this case even if it were formed. Its an employment agency job. 90% of their workers are people in transitory gigs inbetween other jobs. If you had a union, your union would be irrelevant in 90 days because half of your union would be gone to other industries and replaced with new workers who are themselves now newly inbetween jobs. Why would you spend a bunch of time and effort renegotiating with people who are going to be replaced 3-4 times before the year is over?
Here is the grand total of Nintendo’s involvement. They contact the agency, in this case Aston Carter, and they say “We need 40 people to come to this warehouse and put stickers on these promotional items. We’ll pay you $25/hr per employee” and Aston Carter says turns around and starts offering people jobs at $14/hr, or whatever rate at which they decide. Everyone involved 100% works for Aston Carter. They probably don’t even have a phone number for anyone of relevance at Nintendo. Their orientation is by Aston Carter. Their W-2 is by Aston Carter. They’ll have a Nintendo Supervisor on shift, but the boss they talk to if they have a problem is with Aston Carter. They are told, explicitly, you do not work for Nintendo, you work for us.
Just to answer the side question, why would nintendo pay the agency 25 instead of paying the employees themselves, its because when using an agency you don’t have to worry about permanent employees when the amount of work you have at any given time is always changing. Sometimes they have people pressing the art into limited edition consoles, sometimes they have no need of that at all. Sometimes they need to prep 20,000 promotional kits for a mario game, sometimes they have no promotional project at all. They don’t want to have to fire everyone when they don’t have something to do, and then go to all the work of rehiring people when a project comes up.
The majority of temp workers hold their job in zero regard because they know before they start their first day it isn’t what they’re going to be doing in three months. They walk off the job never to come back without talking to anyone, they take the morning off to go job interviewing, they don’t answer their boss’ phone calls. These are not who you’re imagining when you hear the phrase “Nintendo employees”.
So I got some inside information on this just now which I can’t share but…… yeah I do not suggest loudly backing this employee.
Would a mod mind deleting this? Sorry, I just want to be doubly sure I absolutely can not possibly have said anything I shouldn’t have, even if its just that I know something.