In general, tech needs to move to more co-op, employee-&customer-owned, organized labor shops with labor on the board of directors. Mandatory arbitration for any area is BS because for-profit arbitrators are paid to be pseudo-"unbiased" while most often ruling in favor of who pays the bills.
I bet game developers would be the best positioned of all developers to unionize because the wages are so low already that it's hard for management to bring in scabs.
In the context of Riot games and software engineering salaries, wages are still higher than many jobs. According to Paysa Riot games software engineers still make $155K TC on average (https://www.paysa.com/salaries/riot-games--software-engineer). This is lower than FAANG and Unicorn start-ups, but calling it so low it'd be hard to bring in scabs is a stretch at best...
As I understand it the costs of arbitration are usually split between the plaintiff and defendant. However, your point may still be valid because the corporations are often repeat players who wield more influence.
On the other hand, if an arbitration was biased then the plaintiff could petition a court to disregard it and allow a regular suit to proceed. So arbitrators really do need to be unbiased.
Nothing is stopping anyone in Silicon Valley from starting a gaming company that is co-op, employee-&customer-owned, organized labor shops with labor on the board of directors. There are a lot of labor-friendly folks here. Why not pool resources to start one?
Simple: such a company isn't likely to be highly profitable. They can go work on CRUD apps for some enterprise company for a very reliable, solid paycheck, or they can work at FAANG companies for really huge paychecks, without the risk of working at some gaming company that might not survive a year, and has to compete with the big gaming companies that exploit their workers.
Arbitration keeps the court system less full. It has a purpose that everyone ignores. How about solving the underlying problem that brought about arbitration: courts being saddled by too many frivolous lawsuits?
Arbitration, when both parties agree to it, and both participate in choosing the arbitrator, is fine.
But contracts that require you to go though arbitration for any future disputes, and where you have zero choice of venue, are incompatible with due process.
>courts being saddled by too many frivolous lawsuits
Citation Needed.
This has been the argument for many deregulators since the 70's which has resulted in the current culture of Employees being treated as disposable cattle in the US but I have yet to see any strong evidence of it's necesity.
I am incentivised to get the best deal possible for my labour. I am not there to worry about big picture things, that’s what someone else is selling their labour for.
Anything that rational people can do to improve the price they get for their labour, they will.
Unless you own some capital in the company, why would you care overly about the success of the company?
It seems like you feel that everyone involved in a company should be equally bought into whatever “vision” they have, whereas in my case at least I simply don’t care.
Labor does have skin in the game by investing their working time in the company. Also, particularly in tech, stock grants would be lost in such an event.
Entrepreneurs who typically end up with the most shares and control over a company have more skin in the game. They usually work for nothing from the outset with no guaranteed compensation.
If the company wants workers to have some skin in the game it could transition to a compensation strategy that is very stock-heavy with long vesting schedules.
In general, tech needs to move to more co-op, employee-&customer-owned, organized labor shops with labor on the board of directors. Mandatory arbitration for any area is BS because for-profit arbitrators are paid to be pseudo-"unbiased" while most often ruling in favor of who pays the bills.