The Union members of Ubisoft’s Barcelona office raise concerns on the new changes in the work from home policies and files a lawsuit against the company. The Covid 19 pandemic saw several offices shifting to work from home mode. Although it was an extremely stressful crisis, the pandemic has opened several doors for new modes of communication and workplace settings. One such idea was the work from home concept which was implemented by most of the offices to maintain social distancing and help in stopping spread of the virus. It took time for people to get accustomed to those settings but owing to the new normal situation, there are various new problems that are on the rise.
Ubisoft, the French video game publisher, has instructed and are forcing the employees to return back to their offices for three days in a week, which means that 60% of their work days would be from home, and they would also get additional exclusive work from home opportunities. As per the GameIndustry, Ubisoft had failed to give a proposal which could help serve an alternative to this issue, which is why the union had taken the drastic measure of filing a lawsuit on 14th October.
'Better Communication'- Not a good enough reason to come to office
There are proposals from the Spanish labor unit Confederacion General del Trabajo (CGT) suggested Ubisoft to retrieve their decision and protect the work from home rights of the employees. They claimed that Ubisoft’s reasons for compelling the employees to return to office was on the grounds of ‘better communication’ and ‘team creativity’, which was not valid enough to showcase the benefits of the employees to return to office.
It is important to note that nearly seven hundred of the employees of Ubisoft France had participated in the three-day strike to protest against this policy in September. Following this, Ubisoft Milan also took part in a one-day strike last month. It is to be noted that Ubisoft Barcelona is the first one unit to charge the company for their work-base related policy.