The tribunal hearing for Rockstar Games’ alleged union-busting activities has been granted an extension. According to Eurogamer, the proceedings are now slated to conclude in October at the request of Rockstar’s lawyers. The extension was requested because the Grand Theft Auto 6 developer’s legal team needed more time to cross-examine the former employees who had been laid off from the company last year.
Due to the extension, two new dates have been added to the tribunal hearing – November 17th and 18th – which means that the hearing will essentially come to an end just a day before Rockstar releases one of the most anticipated games of all time. In the meantime, the legal team for the IWGB union is also continuing its own cross-examination of the witnesses brought in by Rockstar Games.
Just last month, a spokesperson for Rockstar Games offered a statement before the company began its proceedings for the tribunal. The hearing itself was initially slated to only go on until October 16th.
“Rockstar Games’ position has been clear and consistent throughout. Individuals across the UK and Canada were dismissed for gross misconduct following the sharing of confidential company information, not because of alleged trade union membership or activity. We reject the claims and will defend them vigorously before the tribunal.”
IWGB’s Jason Lewis – who also happens to be a former Rockstar employee – spoke about the relief he felt after fighting to get to the truth for almost an entire year following the studio firing him alongside over 30 other workers.
“For almost a year, the truth about what happened to us has been buried by Rockstar and surrounded by speculation,” he said in a statement. “Now we finally get the chance to put it on the record. None of us imagined that talking to each other about our working conditions would turn our lives upside down and catapult us into the centre of a global media storm. As the world prepares for the release of GTA 6, we are reliving the heartbreak of being thrown out of a project we poured so much of our lives into. We lost our jobs, our income, our community, and the chance to see the game through to release after spending years helping to build it. It was devastating.
“We have fought tooth and nail to get to this point, not just to be able to win justice for ourselves, but to draw a line in the sand for any employer that thinks it can attack workers for unionising. It has been an emotional journey, and it is not over yet, but we can now see the finish line, and justice at last feels within reach.”
While the IWGB and former workers have insisted that Rockstar fired them as part of the company’s larger union-busting activities, the company has remained adamant that the firing was purely a disciplinary matter and that it had not consciously taken any steps to shut down the potential formation of a union. The studio was also called out by one of its own employees for spreading “disinformation and lies”.
