HUNT VALLEY, Md. — Microsoft gaming employees in Hunt Valley are calling on the multi-billion-dollar company to do the right thing following mass layoffs.
Hunt Valley Microsoft gaming employees outraged by mass layoffs
The clock is ticking for many of those employees at Microsoft-owned ZeniMax as they get closer to their last day.
In a round of layoffs, Microsoft announced that they're eliminating 4,800 jobs; that includes cutting jobs for 3,200 people across its XBOX division.
The first phase of these layoffs already affected 1,600 people like Jordan Goldfarb.
“It’s been rough; the job market right now is not a good place to be," Goldfarb said.
The ZeniMax Web Content Editor joined a crowd of his coworkers outside the building Tuesday to protest Microsoft's actions.
In a blog about the layoffs, Executive Vice President Amy Coleman said in part,
"The “why” is this: Our business is changing because the world around it is changing. The way technology is built, deployed, and used is transforming faster than at any point in my time here. Our customers’ needs are shifting, the business models that serve them are shifting, and that means the work itself – what we do, where we focus, and how we’re organized – has to transform too. Companies don’t get to choose whether their industry changes; they only get to choose whether they change with it. That means we will need to adjust resources and roles and shift how we operate so we can have the greatest impact for our customers."
XBOX CEO Asha Sharma said in part,
"Our business today is not healthy. We are operating at margins that are 3-10x lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses. We entered Gen 9 with a smaller install base and a higher cost structure. To grow, we bet on Game Pass, multi-platform, and a broader portfolio of content. While those businesses have created meaningful value, they did not grow at the pace we expected. As that happened, our core business weakened, and we added more teams, more investment, and more time, hoping for a better outcome. And now the industry is facing the most severe hardware crisis in its history. We must reset XBOX."
Goldfarb begs to differ.
“We know the money is there to fund us. Xbox made $22 billion in revenue last year. Microsoft CEO had over $90 million in salary last year.”
The Communications Workers of America union, representing the gaming employees, filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board over alleged violations of status quo protections.
“They were supposed to engage in decisional bargaining with us before making any sort of changes of this magnitude; they did not. That’s illegal.”
WMAR-2 News reached out to Microsoft and XBOX for a response to the claim and legal action.
We haven't heard back yet.
“There’s some hope that the negotiations will extend beyond that period so that we can continue to get things, or they’ll be done by then and we can get our severance. But if one of those two things doesn’t happen, it’s bad. So we’re hoping that we can get some motivation from Microsoft to represent at the bargaining table and work with us and not against us.”
They're getting paid until their last day on September 6th.
