Paizo Recognizes United Paizo Workers

getting a 'Diversity Officer' to promote affirmative action over skill, merit, and quality of content (because quality inevitably suffers when a company buys into the woke propaganda)

There's also the fact that this is not really what a Diversity Officer does. Like, at all. Unless the friends think that taking steps to make a workplace more inviting and accessible to minority hires (like, as an exaggerated example, making sure there are ramps for wheelchair users) is itself racist. It's not hard to find out what the job actually does, so it's weird that they'd act so impulsively to end their subscriptions.

Great news. Congratulations to UPW and well-done Paizo.

TriOmegaZero wrote:

As mentioned elsewhere that was a demand of the freelancers, not the union nor Paizo, and has been dropped.

That's great news (for us). I might be able to get them back on board with that.

That's also not what our demand was. I don't know who among the freelancers those news articles talked to, but they misunderstood whomever or wherever they got that information from. Sorry your friends got duped by the fake news, buddy. That's rough.

Your friends sure have some interesting opinions! It might pay for you to learn more about what they believe on a variety of topics about the welfare of other human beings, to make sure they are people who are actually going to be good friends. Sometimes you think you know people, and can count on them for anything, then they start posting about how your class of people is inherently worse than theirs (except you, of course!)

I've known them for 20+ years. There's not much more to know. What's more, I agree with most of their "interesting opinions." I just wasn't upset enough about it to withdraw my financial support. As I said, I care about quality of product.

Ravingdork's Friends wrote:

getting a 'Diversity Officer' to promote affirmative action over skill, merit, and quality of content (because quality inevitably suffers when a company buys into the woke propaganda)

There's also the fact that this is not really what a Diversity Officer does. Like, at all. Unless the friends think that taking steps to make a workplace more inviting and accessible to minority hires (like, as an exaggerated example, making sure there are ramps for wheelchair users) is itself racist. It's not hard to find out what the job actually does, so it's weird that they'd act so impulsively to end their subscriptions.

The job description is VERY different where we come from I guess. To our community it's synonymous with the act of meeting "quotas" and "grand standing" that have absolutely nothing to do with work merits or quality of a company's product or service and, ultimately, diminishing the company's overall value through illogical and impractical social practices.

If it's very different from that in Seattle, then I am most happy to hear it!

Fantastic news! I know it's only the first step, but I'm so happy for all the workers at Paizo. Jeff, Lisa, Eric, etc- thank you for doing the right thing.

Congrats to the UPW for being a first in the industry- but hopefully not the last!

Solidarity forever, friends!

If you're acknowledging that the job description is different from what you thought it was in this case, and that you misunderstood the freelancers' intentions, maybe you shouldn't go around accusing the freelancers in the same breath of "playing their victim cards." It just sort of comes across as sort of ignorantly meanspirited. Besides, a lot of these freelancers are our friends and neighbors in this community. You aren't insulting some distant and mighty adversary, you're insulting fellow Paizonians.

EDIT: Oops! Raving edited his post, so this no longer applies to him. I'll consider it a general catch-all, since there's been a lot of similar rhetoric flying around.

Woo indeed :3

I'm fully unversed on the subject of unions, 95% genuine question, 5% snark: is it normal in these circumstances to specifically use the phrase "voluntarily recognize?" I'm seeing the word "voluntary" stressed a lot, and it comes of as... not suspicious, just kind of peculiar. Is there an involuntary way to recognize a union?

They force a vote on it, and with the backing they had, were going to win unless Paizo management went into self-destruct mode.

Apologies, didn't mean to fight bad info with bad info!

Dope. Historic is definitely the word. There's a reason Stride is an action, and Paizo just took a big one :)

I'm fully unversed on the subject of unions, 95% genuine question, 5% snark: is it normal in these circumstances to specifically use the phrase "voluntarily recognize?" I'm seeing the word "voluntary" stressed a lot, and it comes of as... not suspicious, just kind of peculiar. Is there an involuntary way to recognize a union?

There's some info about what voluntary recognition would mean here: https://unitedpaizoworkers.org/2021/10/15/day-2-steel-your-resolve/

Excellent! Glad to see more power to the workers!

Ravingdork's Friends wrote:

getting a 'Diversity Officer' to promote affirmative action over skill, merit, and quality of content (because quality inevitably suffers when a company buys into the woke propaganda)

There's also the fact that this is not really what a Diversity Officer does. Like, at all. Unless the friends think that taking steps to make a workplace more inviting and accessible to minority hires (like, as an exaggerated example, making sure there are ramps for wheelchair users) is itself racist. It's not hard to find out what the job actually does, so it's weird that they'd act so impulsively to end their subscriptions.

Wel I think it depends on the company. But agree a diversity officer (or office) can make sense to ensure there is sufficient dedication/attention to an open and flexible working place, which is welcoming to everyone. (And not taking the “avoid the issue” approaches we saw in the room situation

I also admit that I have seen diversity offices being far less diverse than most other departments, with a non-diverse staff with regards to ethnicity, gender and nationality. (But maybe it is mainly this group of people applying). I think these kind of situations may turn people off of the concept, but hey one bad experience does not mean the idea is bad.

Still if the employees support it, that is sufficient for me.

Apologies, didn't mean to fight bad info with bad info!

All good, misinfo was big on that one. Really wish media outlets had made some kind of effort to contact us instead of just making this assumption and publishing with it, but them's the breaks.

I tried to address the misunderstanding on the boards last week on the 15th here, in the United Paizo Workers thread.

Hi, everyone! There seems to be some confusion about the freelancer call for a diversity consultant, and what that means. As a freelancer, I would like to tell you what we were actually asking for.

Paizo hires sensitivity readers, as they should, to look at some of their material. As we continue into the future, the quantity of Paizo content that gets this kind of attention will increase.

There is work that needs to be done. You don't notice the absence of it because it's already being done by staff with a whole other full time jobs worth of duties. Currently, it's up to developers and editors to coordinate with sensitivity readers and raise concerns about content, ontop of their existing jobs.

In addition to coordinating with sensitivity readers, editorial worked their butts off trying to warn about Edgewatch, and then trying to clean up Edgewatch after their warnings went unheeded. Other projects have needed similar attention. Good people keep burning out and leaving because they care about making sure this work gets done, but they can't keep up with doing a whole additional unpaid job ontop of their actual one.

This is a full position worth of work, and it's being piled ontop of existing staff and contributing to the perpetual crunch on dev, design, and edit's shoulders, when it could be made into a formalized position within the editorial department, and become one person's clear job to handle.

¡Muchas felicidades!

Anyone acting like a diversity officer would be some kind of woke bridge too far… feels a little late to the party? We have polyamorous lesbian goddesses, prominently-featured trans NPCs, and a significant focus on depicting the non-white characters and cultures of Golarion in the edition so far.

For whatever management’s flaws, Paizo has very clearly thrown in with diversity, inclusivity, and broadly progressive ideals. This isn’t news.

I feel like a lot of anti-woke "Pathfinder fans" aren't actually super into Pathfinder itself. It's easy to just buy a few rulebooks and the Inner Sea World Guide and assume that, for instance, Shelyn and Cayden Cailean are clearly going to settle down and have a nice traditional Erastilian wedding any day now. :P

^Now that's REALLY scary . . . .

Sandal Fury wrote:

I'm fully unversed on the subject of unions, 95% genuine question, 5% snark: is it normal in these circumstances to specifically use the phrase "voluntarily recognize?" I'm seeing the word "voluntary" stressed a lot, and it comes of as... not suspicious, just kind of peculiar. Is there an involuntary way to recognize a union?

There's some info about what voluntary recognition would mean here: https://unitedpaizoworkers.org/2021/10/15/day-2-steel-your-resolve/

Linkified for your convenience.

Lol.
Changes nothing. Certain employees will still send Richard Pix to people…

Fantastic news. I just put in an order for Starfinder: Near Space.

Congratulations all!

This is fantastic news! Congratulations Paizo on not resembling the cartoonishly evil corporations from its own adventure path. I will resume my purchases of Starfinder material, until such time as the Union reports management is uncooperative. Worker solidarity.

Great news and a fantastic first step to making Paizo a company to believe in again.

I hear people talk about diversity quotas all the time, but I dunno that's ever matched my own experiences. Out of sheer boredom I've run an informal experiment over the last few years of sending out batches of applications for work (freelance, short term gigs mostly since I need to chain them together); on some I list myself as white, in others mixed race (both are true; mixed race who can "pass").

I've seen precisely zero correlation between which companies get back to me.

I know there have been formal studies done where identical applications were sent out where the only difference was John/Juan or similar markers, and on a statistical scale that definitely made a difference, where such applicants were contacted less frequently.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/black-sounding-names-study_n_561697a 5e4b0dbb8000d687f

I know there have been formal studies done where identical applications were sent out where the only difference was John/Juan or similar markers, and on a statistical scale that definitely made a difference, where such applicants were contacted less frequently.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/black-sounding-names-study_n_561697a 5e4b0dbb8000d687f

Yeah there are similar examples across the globe I am afraid. Here there are examples where changing eg “Femke” to “ Fatima” or “Mark” to “Mohammed” and replacing volunteer work at eg a Church by volunteer work at a Mosque had a similar impact.

I am so sorry to hear this for all of the Paizo creators / creatives. I will hope for the best for all of the workers.

I know there have been formal studies done where identical applications were sent out where the only difference was John/Juan or similar markers, and on a statistical scale that definitely made a difference, where such applicants were contacted less frequently.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/black-sounding-names-study_n_561697a 5e4b0dbb8000d687f

So in other words, best case scenario "diversity quotas" aren't real, worst case scenario reality is basically an inverse of what people think of when they hear that term.

Elegos wrote:

I know there have been formal studies done where identical applications were sent out where the only difference was John/Juan or similar markers, and on a statistical scale that definitely made a difference, where such applicants were contacted less frequently.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/black-sounding-names-study_n_561697a 5e4b0dbb8000d687f

So in other words, best case scenario "diversity quotas" aren't real, worst case scenario reality is basically an inverse of what people think of when they hear that term.

Well they are real, but likely very rare. I know here they are allowed to first hire eg women at technical universities, but only after establishing there is true underrepresentation. And even then it comes with limitations.

I know in the US my company has requirements for diverse slates of candidates (but note that it is illegal in most countries to select on race or register race) but I think that for every company that has a quotum benefiting minorities or underrepresented groups there are 10 (being generous here….) that skew the other way…….

Going back to the Union, I would hope they can support eg blinded and merit based hiring. I seem to recall they had blinded reviews of contributions in the past to select writers, which seems like a good way to select based on skills without letting unconscious (or conscious) bias get in the way.

Time to fill my basket!

wyrmhaven wrote:

I am so sorry to hear this for all of the Paizo creators / creatives. I will hope for the best for all of the workers.

This is a good thing for them, not a bad one.

Hoping it with you, and as long as we buyers are willing to chip in, we should be ok.

Except you John, I know to give yers to Thursty.

Little known fact: the nickname is not actually short for Thurston.

Dean HS Jones wrote:

wyrmhaven wrote:

I am so sorry to hear this for all of the Paizo creators / creatives. I will hope for the best for all of the workers.

This is a good thing for them, not a bad one.

Hoping it with you, and as long as we buyers are willing to chip in, we should be ok.

I deleted my reply after posting because I wasn’t completely sure I was replying to the sentiment I thought I was but yeah, this should not impact us consumers and isn’t likely to cause any prices to get jacked up; I speak as someone who was a union member at a publishing company for many years.

Berhagen wrote:

Dean HS Jones wrote:

wyrmhaven wrote:

I am so sorry to hear this for all of the Paizo creators / creatives. I will hope for the best for all of the workers.

This is a good thing for them, not a bad one.

Hoping it with you, and as long as we buyers are willing to chip in, we should be ok.

I deleted my reply after posting because I wasn’t completely sure I was replying to the sentiment I thought I was but yeah, this should not impact us consumers and isn’t likely to cause any prices to get jacked up; I speak as someone who was a union member at a publishing company for many years.

I think some improvements should be possible to do in a cost-neutral way, but I expect some of them might increase costs (and prices), also as Paizo exists within a specific location/environment. I would actually be fine to pay higher prices if that gives the contributors a more liveable wage.

But generally speaking I think costs-effective and competitive should still be possible. It is not like the countries with the best quality of life (for the overall population) are lacking jobs/competitiveness.

This is great news indeed. This will hopefully shake up the industry a little bit, and provide some security for anyone working as a freelancing artist.

...this should not impact us consumers and isn’t likely to cause any prices to get jacked up; I speak as someone who was a union member at a publishing company for many years.

I hope that is the case. I only have experience with the building trades which can be quite different than other unions.

One of the reasons union membership is down is because of the work-flow. We have over the years in many regions priced ourselves out of competition. Generally speaking the union completes higher quality work, but you pay for that quality. The non-union shops, who pay significantly lower wages, can often price their work outside of the competitive range for union shops. This means more work goes to the non-union shops. Unfortunately, its a rare thing to see the union give something back and we rarely negotiate lower wages in order to compete. The general perspective seems to be that is a problem for the contractors to solve. Union tradesmen can be quite stubborn about these sorts of things I'm afraid.

So, comparing that to this situation, if the UPW reaches too high, Paizo will have to raise their consumer prices in order to meet the demands. They have already made some price increases over the past few years that received a lot of flack in the forums, but there is no way for us to know if it actually affected sales/revenue/profit. They have some luxury to charge more because they put out some of the best looking products in the industry. However, demand has limits. I hope this process does not force them to raise prices above that threshold and drive their customers away.

*EDIT-course their employment practices have already pushed customers away so it might be six of one, half a dozen of the other

Thank you.

I wish both management and the union the best of luck in working together to improve the company for everyone -- employees, management, and customers.

With regard to to your union logo, was the communist symbolism really necessary? Something more akin to the AFL-CIO or the Teamsters logos - but still Pathfinder/Starfinder-like - would have been far more appropriate. Maybe something incorporating the Open Road symbol instead of a tool harkening back to the hammer and sickle.

Is not a raised fist or a hammer and sickle. Chill. Anyway, good luck with the endeavour. Let's hope the best may come from this.

Humbly,
Yawar

With regard to to your union logo, was the communist symbolism really necessary?

Reeeeally gotta want to find something to complain about to come up with that one.

To the extent this lets thing move onto management and employees having the actual discussions. It is unquestionably a good thing. However for those who have asked how one can have reservations about the union (I prefer the term worker corporation as it more accurately sets expectations) look at some of the posts already listed. It is possible to agree with your union leaders for example that one's bosses are clueless and also disagree with their bargaining tactics or demands. Myself my one time in a union, I was hired under emergency circumstances. And then because of the interplay between union rules and management I was automatically released at the end of the contract with the possibility of being hired back months later out of season for a reduced role. My spouse was also pressured into striking at one point, which probably would have ended very poorly for us, but a completely outside the organization event prevented the strike from lasting too long.

In the spirit of helpfulness: union solidarity will undoubtedly be highest right now the challenge for whomever is elected to the negotiating team is not likely this round. It is figuring and anticipating what issues will come-up in the future and how a highly intelligent independent thinking cast will want to respond when the unity of the moment passes.

If symbols of labour and work are only considered exclusively to be symbols of communism or socialism, maybe that says a lot about how capitalism is failing its workers. Just a thought.

This is a good step for Paizo to take, showing that management seems willing to work with employees to make a better company.

Yes, they had a lot of pressure on them to make this move. Even still, many a company would force a vote anyway, arguing that it would be good business to fight the union.

There is A LOT of work to be done, but I'm happy that Paizo took this step.

This is a good step for Paizo to take, showing that management seems willing to work with employees to make a better company.

Yes, they had a lot of pressure on them to make this move. Even still, many a company would force a vote anyway, arguing that it would be good business to fight the union.

There is A LOT of work to be done, but I'm happy that Paizo took this step.

While I like to think they did the right thing because it was the right thing and I'm sure the public pressure helped, I think it was the freelancer's work stoppage that made forcing the vote untenable. At least unless they were going to with serious union busting tactics.

With the loss of so much freelance work, they couldn't afford to play a waiting game to see if support dropped before a vote could take place.

I'm glad that Paizo has recognized the union. I'm hopeful things will improve and this is a much more concrete step towards that than words alone but I think it's safe to say people are still going to be watching,

Given the freelancer concerted action that was already in place I was pretty sure this would happen and this quickly.

- Well done freelancers and UPW (some of you are obviously both). Know that management are…management. More power to you.

- To Paizo management: please make an effort to treat with your workers and freelancers as fellow adventurers. Remember Erik, that chapter of Hollow Mountain that specifically mentions not splitting the party (just read Hollow Mountain comic today. My son is reading it while I write this…)

- To errybody: The same old cliches apply: work together for the common good; happy workers are productive workers; pray I don’t alter the deal further; relaxed workers make for happy customers; I dunno Artoo, what am I even doing here; no jobs on a dead planet; hammers and sickles are not political, people are; etc etc etc.

Personally I’m still grizzly and wary. I see no cause for rampant celebration on my end, but for the UPW I wouldn’t be surprised if a few glasses are raised in celebration. Explore (your options) Cooperate (and organise) and Report (incidents of malfeasance, harrassment, dismocracy)…

Oh man this happened when I was driving home from work and I just found out now. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I am so happy to hear this.

As with my call to Paizo to recognise the union, I have sent a brief email directly to Erik, Lisa, and Jeff, to express my thanks and admiration for this step.