French Ubisoft Workers Encouraged To Strike Over Return To Office Policy Dispute

It seems that Ubisoft’s insistence that employees return to working in the office at least three times a week is backfiring on them in France. The company has been modifying its plans since last year when we wrote about the change requiring Montreal employees to come into the office twice a week. More recently, the developer notified staff that they would be changing the policy to three days a week to make things consistent.

As it turns out, French workers, and their related union Syndicat des Travailleurs et Travailleuses du Jeu Vidéo (STJV), aren’t happy with this decision. As the union notes in their post calling for employees to strike October 15 – 17, Ubisoft staff has been “working efficiently in the current remote-work context” for over five years. The post also points out that staff has built their lives around this system and this shift will be highly disruptive. A fact the post states Ubisoft knows “perfectly well”. It goes on to add, “The consequence of [Ubisoft’s] decision will be the loss of our colleagues’ jobs, the disorganization of many game projects, and the drastic increase in psychological risks for those who remain”.

The strike call lists three demands: a formal agreement on remote work, an immediate increase in salaries, and the implementation of “a social dialogue”. The union hopes to guarantee that staff can choose the number of days they work per week. It also hopes to account for a drop in living standards by restoring profit-sharing. On the final point, the post states that “Management seems indeed to confuse monologue with dialogue”. Obviously, employees are hoping to be listened to rather than dictated to by Ubisoft, a company that currently doesn't find itself in the best financial position and recently delayed the next Assassin's Creed and cancelled their TGS 2024 appearance.