Democracy at Work. Unions and Works Councils in the Games Industry

Unions and works councils empower workers to shape their workplaces, leading to better working conditions and a healthy democratic society. However, the games industry is sorely lacking in widespread worker representation. In this talk, we will give an overview of the main labor laws in Germany. We will explain how unions and works councils work and what they have done in the past and are doing today to help workers improve their workplaces. Finally, we will describe how you can organize yourself and the benefits as well as obstacles you can expect.

Speaker-Bios

Rüdiger Brandis is currently working as producer at Playing History in Berlin after spending four years at the Cologne-based HTML-5 game studio Flying Sheep Studios, where he also founded its works council and served as its chairman. Before that, he started his own studio called Achtung Autobahn Studios with two former colleagues with the aim of developing social-realistic games based on historical and contemporary political movements. He studied History and Literature at the University of Göttingen and Game Development and Research at the Cologne Game Lab.

Matthias Grzegorczyk has been working as an organizer for the trade union ver.di for five years. He is responsible for the IT sector, which also includes the GameDev-industry. He helps ver.di-members to organize works councils and to develop trade union structures at their workplaces. Before that he was a worker in the IT- and fashion-industry, where he was involved multiple times in founding works councils. He has been a union member since he finished school and started working. He studied Social Sciences and History at the University of Duisburg.

Zoom invite:

Topic: Guest Lecture Rüdiger Brandis & Matthias Grzegorczyk
Time: Jun 18, 2024 05:30 PM Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna

Join Zoom Meeting
https://th-koeln.zoom-x.de/j/68291627299

Meeting ID: 682 9162 7299
Passcode: 540314