Employees of the Ubisoft teams based in France were surprising this week in the studio three days a week return to work mandate (RTO), and now Italian workers are joining this effort.
For Expirationthe developers of the Milan team have organized a strike today, October 17th. Through the country's Fiom Cgil union, members of Ubisoft Milano said they were afraid to leave their jobs because of the reinstated policy.
“It is unthinkable that a young person who lives in another region or in any case far from our territory could spend three days a week in Milan, turning their existence upside down”, said Fiom representative Andrea Rosafalco. “It is not economically sustainable and it is unfair on a human level.”
Last year, Ubisoft Montreal it was the first studio to implement the RTO policy, after the previous three years were remote due to the pandemic. At the time, several Montreal employees believed that Ubisoft had reneged on its original position or was intentionally using politics to convince employees to resign without compensation.
This past SeptemberUbisoft said the policy will be standard across all its studios to create consistency. At this point, half of the global staff was reportedly already back in the office and a third were working together in person.
STJVthe French game developers union, pushed Ubisoft employees in Lyon, Paris, Annecy and other cities to strike. At the time, it was claimed that the policy had been adopted “without any tangible justification or without any consultation with workers' representatives”.
Along with a formal agreement allowing staff to work from home (and choose when to work in the office), the union called on Ubisoft to increase workers' pay and open a “constructive social dialogue” with its employees.
French workers have been on strike for the last three days (15-17 October), and this is the second strike by Ubisoft staff this year. Back inside February700 French employees left after receiving “terrible” pay increases of 2 or 3%.