A Union Is Not Step One
The hard lesson from Ubisoft Halifax, leverage first, union second. Some subjective observations earned via recent WGA strike actions.
I was reading the grim news about Ubisoft Halifax. The developers voted to unionize, and then Ubisoft closed the studio.
Ubisoft says it was broader cost cutting. The union disputes what that timing means. Either way, the outcome doesn’t change, people are out of work, and everyone else in the business hears the warning shot.
I can’t read that as a neutral observer. My brain goes straight to the WGA, to that familiar moment when you realize a contract is only half the fight. The other half is leverage. A union only works when it’s connected to leverage, the ability to make “no” more expensive than “yes.”
If you’re organizing in entertainment, games, or anywhere else right now, don’t skip the unglamorous part. Find the cracks in the legacy business model. Figure out how long the company can coast. Then figure out what they can do instead of bargaining with you. Like good gigs, leverage is in short supply for the working class. Ugh.
A lot of workers are being told, “Unionize, then you’ll have protection.” That’s backwards in plenty of modern industries, games included.
Unionizing doesn’t create leverage by itself. It creates a legal body that can bargain. If you don’t already have leverage, the employer can stall, route around you, or shut the unit and walk away.
Right now, “close it” is sitting on the table as a normal option. Not a scandal. Not an apocalypse. Just another move. So let’s name the thing that decides outcomes.
Leverage.
A union is a tool, not a shield
Leverage isn’t a slogan. It’s a clock.
It means the employer believes refusing your demands costs them more than meeting them, and that the cost shows up fast enough that they can’t just wait it out.
Not eventually. Not in theory. Soon.
If the company can absorb the disruption cheaply, you can do everything “right” and still lose in practice. The business model lets them wait you out. Or wipe the board.
That’s what Halifax crystallized for me.
If your employer can close the shop without catastrophic damage, a union vote can become the moment they decide to take the exit they already find affordable.
Prof. G’s blunt version of the same argument
Scott Galloway has been saying a version of this that makes people mad, mostly because it’s not comforting.
His take is that the WGA and SAG struck at a moment when the companies had reasons to welcome the stoppage, not fear it. He calls it a “gift” because it gave everyone cover to pause spending at the same time, without one streamer grabbing share by outspending the others.
He also keeps coming back to oversupply. Hollywood needs fewer scribblers, fewer actors, fewer execs. A strike doesn’t change that math.
Harsh, yes. Clarifying too. It forces the one question that matters before you escalate.
What is management’s cheapest response?
If “wait” is cheap, a long strike becomes a hardship machine for workers and a budgeting opportunity for employers.
The WGA strike lesson that travels outside Hollywood
The 2023 writers strike happened in a different Hollywood than the one most people still picture.
In the broadcast and cable era, pain showed up fast. Weekly schedules needed fresh episodes. Ad inventory needed new product. When scribblers stopped, the machine started bleeding.
Streaming is built to bleed slower.
A platform can coast on a library. The link between “no new episodes this week” and immediate revenue loss is fuzzier now. Subscriber churn is slower than overnight ratings, and easier to hide inside bundles, promos, and global catalogs.
So the strike was never going to be a quick “turn off the spigot, money stops” event. It was always going to be a campaign where leverage arrives later, when future slates, release calendars, and staffing plans start collapsing.
Galloway goes further and says you have to do the ugly math after the deal. Five months of zero pay is hard to “win back” with modest raises. He argues the Guild had to declare victory because it couldn’t declare defeat after imposing that cost on members. He’s skeptical of any victory lap that doesn’t include the lost income.
That doesn’t mean striking was pointless. It means the lesson is not “strikes don’t work.”
The lesson is: if you misread leverage, you can take a high-cost action for a low or ambiguous return.
And there’s a second lesson in his critique that matters for every creative union right now.
Galloway thinks labor is fighting the wrong enemy.
In his view, the real antagonist is Big Tech and AI, systems that can ingest creative work at low or zero cost, then wedge between creators and audiences. If that’s right, then the long game is not only getting better terms from studios. It’s fighting for IP protection and compensation for the raw material that trains and powers the new machine.
Not comforting either. But it points at where leverage may actually be building.
Step zero, build power before you force recognition
Build collective power in a way that creates leverage. Then unionizing becomes one of the tools that formalizes and defends that power.
Because once you file and win a certification vote, you’re not just “starting.” You’re forcing management to pick a response.
If their cheapest response is “bargain,” you’re in a leverage-positive situation.
If their cheapest response is “stall,” you need a plan that makes stalling hurt.
If their cheapest response is “close the unit,” you’re about to bet people’s livelihoods on the company deciding to act against its own incentives.
That bet can be worth it in some circumstances. But it should be made with eyes open.
The Leverage Map Worksheet (with WGA caution flags)
The gate question
If we win a certification vote tomorrow, what is management’s cheapest response?
Bargain
Stall
Close the unit or move the work
Do not proceed until you can say which one it is, and why.
WGA caution: In 2023, “stall” was structurally easier than people wanted to admit because streamers could coast on libraries and delay the pain into future slates. That’s part of why the strike ran 148 days.
2007 caution: In 2007–08, the networks had more immediate schedule exposure. Late-night went dark right away, and “stall” carried a faster visible cost.
What business are you actually in?
Live service, annual release, work-for-hire, internal tools, R&D, support studio, porting, QA, customer ops.
WGA caution: Not all “Hollywood writers” were sitting on the same leverage. Late-night and daily shows felt impact first, while many scripted series had already wrapped for the season and could coast for a while.
Translate that to games: a live ops team is not the same as a porting pod.
What is the pain clock?
What breaks in 7 days, 30 days, 90 days?
Be specific. “Culture” is not a choke point. “The season drop slips” is a choke point.
WGA caution: The first “break” in 2023 was late-night, immediate and public, but the real studio pain was downstream: release calendars, future slates, production start dates. That delay changes everything about endurance.
2007 caution: Studios and networks started planning for the rest of the season and even pilot season disruption. The pain clock was visible in the schedule faster.
What is management’s Plan B?
Backlog, outsourcing, vendor swaps, shifting work across borders, canceling the project, closing the studio, folding the work into a different entity.
Assume Plan B exists.
WGA caution: In 2023, some productions continued because scripts were already finished or because the show’s production model let it keep moving for a while. That’s a real-world example of Plan B.
2007 caution: Networks leaned into alternatives, ordering more unscripted and reality programming as scripted pipelines stalled.
How replaceable are you, in practice?
How fast can they hire and train people who can ship to the same standard, under the same deadlines?
WGA caution: A lot of Hollywood labor isn’t “replaceable” in quality terms, but employers can still route around it with different kinds of content, different geographies, or by simply making less. That’s the point Prof. G keeps hammering. Too many people chasing fewer slots.
2007 caution: The strike hit a lot of workers beyond writers. Production crews and support staff took major wage losses as production stopped. A reminder that “replaceability” often shows up as collateral damage.
What is the shutdown risk?
Can they close the studio, dissolve the team, or move the work into a different legal box?
If yes, what makes that move painful for them?
WGA caution: The contract fight in 2023 was happening inside companies already cutting, consolidating, and rethinking slates. A shutdown, pause, or cancellation is not an emergency lever anymore. It’s a normal lever.
Halifax framing is the games version of that.
What do you control that can’t be faked quickly?
Release readiness. Build and deploy. Live ops continuity. Platform compliance. Trust-and-safety operations. Security. Institutional memory that keeps the game from quietly falling apart.
WGA caution: The reason 2023 leverage arrived later is that the early disruption was easier to absorb than people hoped. The library effect. The choke points that mattered were the ones tied to future pipeline: production starts and calendar certainty.
What pressure lands faster than a work stoppage?
Public narrative that sticks. Partner pressure. Platform-holder scrutiny. Recruiting damage. Talent flight. Investor confidence. Regulatory attention.
If a strike is easy to ignore at first, you need levers that make ignoring expensive.
2007 caution: Awards shows and high-visibility programming became pressure points. Late-night going dark was immediate reputational and schedule pressure.
2023 caution: Even with visibility, studios could still delay the real financial reckoning. That’s why “fast pressure” needs to be something the company can’t just absorb as a cost-saving pause.
Are your demands tied to where the money is now?
Not where the money used to be.
WGA caution: A big part of the 2023 deal was about streaming-era economics and control points. Viewership-based bonuses, access to streaming data, staffing minimums, and AI terms. That’s the model of “tie demands to the current revenue logic.”
2007 caution: 2007–08 was also a “new media” fight for its era. Writers were trying to get paid for emerging distribution modes as the business shifted.
My Scribbler’s Take
A union isn’t a shield. It’s a tool that works only when it’s connected to leverage. The closure of Ubisoft Halifax is one more warning flare for any industry where companies can cut headcount, shuffle work, and close units without blinking.
So if you’re organizing, start with step zero. Build power in ways the company can’t cheaply delete. Then decide when/if recognition and bargaining become the right move.
A lever only moves objects when placed under something that has no choice other than moving.