In our letter to management this past Monday, we called on Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro to take the high road and voluntarily recognize our union by Friday, May 1st. That deadline has now come and gone, with no direct response from the company. Management claims to be committed to ensuring every person is heard, valued, and supported. However, when we spoke up about our desire to unionize, they responded only to the press.
We still maintain that the success of our union is inevitable. The company has witnessed the tremendous outpouring of support and positive attention that our campaign has received from the public and the press. They have received our voluntary recognition letter with the names of a super-majority of the Arena team. We are confident that we are going to win recognition of this union; it's only a question of time. We look forward now towards the NLRB election, which we expect to be held within the coming weeks.
We want to thank all of our supporters for the incredible show of solidarity we've received from the wider Magic community. More than 30,000 people have already signed our public petition calling on Wizards of the Coast to recognize our union. We've heard so many messages of support from players, influencers, content creators, and more. Please keep up the pressure and continue urging WOTC and Hasbro to do the right thing; they can still choose to voluntarily recognize our union any time before the impending election.
If you haven't already, head to cwa.org/uwotcletter and add your name. With the workers and the fans standing united, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish!
While we're disappointed in this delay, together we remain strong in our convictions. We look forward to sitting down at the bargaining table so we can make Arena better for workers, for Wizards, and for our players.
>Solidarity forever,
For the union makes us strong!
- Union Anthem, Ralph Chaplin
(Edited to fix Ralph Chaplin quote)