Sega workers form largest multi-department video game union in the US

Workers at Sega of America, representing multiple departments, have voted to form a union. With 91 employees voting yes out of a total number of 212 eligible employees, the Allied Employees Guild Improving SEGA (also known as AEGIS-CWA) becomes the fifth video game union in the United States and its largest multi-department video game union.

The AEGIS union drive was announced in April but was a year in coming for the workers at Sega of America’s Burbank and Irvine, California, offices.

AEGIS-CWA is the US’s fifth video game union overall, joining groups at Raven Software, Blizzard Albany, ZeniMax, and VR / AR game developer Tender Claws. In addition to being among the first video game unions in the country, AEGIS-CWA will also represent workers across a multitude of departments including brand marketing, games as a service, localization, marketing services, product development operations, product development, sales, quality assurance teams, and more, making it the largest multi-discipline video game union in the United States.

AEGIS-CWA is unique in that it represents worker interests across a broad range of disciplines. All of the video game unions in the US so far have been contained within QA, a department with a reputation across the industry of underpaying and overworking its workers. There’s hope, then, that AEGIS-CWA and Tender Claws Human Union (the first multi-department video game union that was established in July 2022) will lead to more inter-departmental unionization efforts the way Raven Software formally kicked off union drives at Activision Blizzard.

The Verge has reached out to Sega for comment.