Activision Blizzard, the publishing giant behind all of call of Duty to Overwatch, is being sued by the California Department for Fair Employment and Housing over a “frat boy” workplace culture that allegedly resulted in years of harassment and abuse against women in its workforce.
Content warning: suicide, harassment, rape
Bloomberg reported that the men’s suit, filed July 20, is the culmination of a two-year investigation into the publisher by the department that found Activision Blizzard’s “compliance with California’s comprehensive health and safety standards is long overdue.”
“In order to enforce such compliance,” it says in the case, “the DFEH reaches this state enforcement action in order to remedy, prevent and deter [Activision Blizzard’s] Violations of state civil rights and laws on equal pay. “
The lawsuit points to the shortage of women in leadership positions in the company and their difficulties in advancement, but also points to enormous wage differences at the executive level between women and men and says that women are not only promoted more slowly, but they are also “getting faster than their men.” Colleagues ”terminated.
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The company’s “Frat Boy” workplace culture is also cited as a “breeding ground for harassment and discrimination against women”. Some of the examples provided include:
In the office women are exposed to “cube-crawling” during which male employees drink copiously [amounts] Drinking alcohol while “crawling” through various cubicles in the office and often behaving inappropriately towards female employees. Male employees proudly come to work hungover, play video games for long periods of time while at work and delegate their responsibilities to female employees, joke about their sexual encounters, talk openly about female bodies, and joke about rape.
Female employees are constantly exposed to sexual harassment, have to constantly fend off unwanted sexual comments and advances from their male colleagues and superiors and are groped at the “Cube Crawl” and other company events. High-ranking executives and creative people carried out blatant sexual harassment with no consequences.
In one particularly tragic example, an employee committed suicide while on a business trip with a male supervisor who had brought butt plugs and lubricant.
The lawsuit also alleges that Activision Blizzard failed to respond to “numerous complaints” of harassment, discrimination and retaliation from male colleagues over these complaints, and says that affected employees “continued to be discouraged from complaining, as human resources employees are known to have been were close to alleged molesters ”. “.
The DFEH has filed the injunction forcing Activision Blizzard not only to comply with state labor laws, but also to address “unpaid wages, wage adjustments, back payments, and lost wages and benefits for female employees.”
In January of this year, Activision will be Blizzard called attempts to make his workplace more diverse than “impractical”.
Update 7/21/2021 10 p.m. ET: Activision responded to the DFEH lawsuit with a long statement in which the DFEH and its lawsuit “irresponsible behavior of unaccountable state bureaucrats ”.
We value diversity and strive to promote a workplace that is inclusive for everyone. Sexual misconduct or harassment of any kind has no place in our company or our industry. We take every allegation seriously and investigate all claims. In cases of misconduct, steps have been taken to correct the problem.
The DFEH contains skewed and, in many cases, incorrect descriptions of Blizzard’s past. We were extremely cooperative with the DFEH during their investigation, including providing full data and documentation, but they refused to tell us what problems they had perceived. They were required by law to do appropriate research and have good faith conversations with us to better understand and resolve any claims or concerns before initiating any legal action, but they did not. Instead, they rushed to file an inaccurate complaint, as we’ll show in court. We are outraged by the reprehensible behavior of the DFEH to include the tragic suicide of an employee in the lawsuit, whose death has no bearing on this case and regardless of her grieving family. Unfortunately, while we find this behavior shameful and unpr ofessional, it is an example of how they behaved in the course of their investigation. It is this kind of irresponsible behavior by unaccountable state bureaucrats that drives many of the best corporations in the state out of California.
The picture that the DFEH paints is not the Blizzard workplace of today. Over the past few years, and since the inception of the initial survey, we’ve made significant changes to accommodate corporate culture and reflect more diversity in our leadership teams. We have updated our Code of Conduct to emphasize a strict focus on retaliation, expanded internal programs and channels for employees to report violations, including the “ASK List” with a confidential integrity hotline, and introduced an employee relations team, dedicated to investigating employees’ concerns. We have stepped up our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion and pooled our employee networks on a global level to provide additional support. In addition, employees must be trained in anti-harassment regularly and for many years.
We go to great lengths to create fair and rewarding compensation packages and policies that reflect our culture and business, and we strive to pay all employees fairly for the same or substantially similar work. We take a variety of proactive steps to ensure that payment is driven by non-discriminatory factors. For example, we reward and reward employees based on their performance and conduct extensive anti-discrimination training, including for those who are part of the compensation process.
We are confident that we can demonstrate our practices as an equal opportunity employer that promotes a supportive, diverse and inclusive workplace for our employees, and we are committed to continuing these efforts for years to come. It’s a shame the DFEH didn’t want to talk to us about what they thought was seen in their investigation.
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