 Hey everyone, welcome back to Nintendo Prime. We've got a bit of a talking video today. It's gonna be a single topic focused more of an old school style video. Sorry about not having a Prime 5 today. It just wasn't working out the way I wanted to. Not that there wasn't enough stories, but we're just extra busy this week with other types of content that we're working on. That being said, I wanted to make sure I did get this out because it's a really important story to me. If you guys remember, we did a video, not, it wasn't really that long ago. It's really been an ongoing story about how the National Labor Union and the NLRB was fighting against Nintendo over claims from former employees, that Nintendo was wrongfully firing people and, well, essentially not allowing unions to form. And then there was a whole other mess of stories that came around this about Nintendo of America not treating contract employees well. And I have been debating whether I wanted to keep following this story up because honestly, I like covering positive stories. I kind of get sick of negative stories all the time, but I need to be fair. I'm not a Nintendo shill, even though I love Nintendo and I'm looking forward to Tears of the Kingdom and Sparks of Hope and Band of the Three and the next Nintendo platform and I have a lot of joy and fun around Nintendo, but I can't ignore when there's some negative stuff going on that Nintendo might be in the wrong for. And now one of the lawsuits filed against Nintendo seems to have reached a conclusion and the conclusion is rather complex. Essentially, Nintendo sort of admits they did wrong, but then goes ahead to continue to deny they did wrong and yet they still have to do certain things as if they were wrong. It's really weird. Let's get into this article first over on Axios about this entire situation. All right, so as you see here, we have an article by Stephen Detil that Nintendo has settled a labor dispute with a game tester over unions or rather interesting article title getting down into the article. Former Nintendo game tester Mackenzie Clifton will receive $26,000 in back pay and damages as part of a settlement with the game maker according to a filing with the National Labor Relations Board. Why does this matter? The settlement closes the first of two labor complaints brought against Nintendo and a contracting firm this year over alleged violations of a worker's right to organize. Details, the settlement signed by Clifton and lawyers from Nintendo of America and contracting firm Ashton Carter call for $25,000 in pay and interest and $1,000 in damages. Nintendo and Ashton Carter will be required to post a notice about workers federally protected rights at the entrance to its product testing department for 60 days. It will also email it to all members of that team. The notice states in part that workers have the right to form, join or assist a union. Catching up quick, Clifton filed their complaint to the NLRB in April and went public with their account in an interview with Axios last month. A veteran game tester who's earned praise from colleagues for their work on Super Smash Bros. Clifton said they were reprimanded by an Ashton Carter manager for asking Nintendo of America President Doug Bowser about unionization during a company meeting. Nintendo later said Clifton was fired for revealing confidential information but Clifton showed Axios the tweet cited for their firing and it didn't name the new game they were working on just that a glitch made the unidentified game temporarily appear red. Clifton had requested that a letter of apology signed by Bowser be included in the settlement but was told by the NLRB that it wasn't required. Any such letter is not mentioned in the terms of the settlement. So what are they saying? Nintendo is thankful that a resolution was reached, the company noted in a statement shared with Axios saying it was focused on ensuring that our working environment remains welcoming and supportive for all employees and associates. The back half of Nintendo's statement stresses the obligation of Nintendo workers not to disclose Nintendo confidential business information and trade secrets. It did not address why Clifton's tweet was deemed a fireable offense. Clifton told Axios the settlement with Nintendo of America was a success. My original goal behind filing the charge was to show my coworkers at Nintendo of America what their rights are and what happens when they choose to exercise them. In that sense, the terms of the settlement are exactly what I hope to see. The big picture, workers at game companies have been speaking up more in recent years about the tenuous contracts, low pay, long hours and workplace misconduct that have increasingly cited potential unionization as an issue. Last year, testers at scandal-ridden Activision Lizard announced plans to form a union. It was a question about those efforts that Clifton believed led to their firing. Going deeper than this, they have an exclusive on all of this stuff as well. And what's interesting is Stefan Tutillo, the author went on Twitter to kind of add a little more context because obviously when you're talking on social media and he's got a big following from his Kotaku days that you get a lot of people asking questions. So it says the settlement doesn't detail what the National Labor Relations Board found and the payment is obviously a pittance for Nintendo and Ashton Carter. So I mean, for them it's a drop in the bucket. But it's notable that Nintendo did settle without Clifton's requested letter of apology. So they're not going to apologize for Clifton for why they were fired, but Nintendo did not want this to obviously go into full and open court. This is the notice that Nintendo will have to post. Parts of it are redacted by the NLRB and it needs to be emailed to all Nintendo of America testers, contractors or otherwise too. So this is the letter right here, the National Labor Relations Board Act gives you the right to form, join or assist a union, choose a representative to bargain with us on your behalf, act together with other employees for your benefit and protection, choose not to engage in any of the protected activities. We will not interfere with restraint or coerce you to exercise the above rights. You have the right to talk about a union. We will not stop you from talking about a union. We will not fire you because you exercise your right to raise issues and complaints to us on behalf of yourself and other employees, including related to the topic of unionization. We will not fire you because of your union membership or support. Ashton Carter will make whole B6, B7C, this is obviously redacted stuff, including paying for the wages and other benefits, more redacted, lost plus interest, Ashton Carter. So it's notable that fortunately enough, the stuff that Ashton Carter is involved with is what's redacted. Maybe there's a big, much bigger issue with Ashton Carter in general. Anyways, Ashton Carter will remove from its employee files all references to the discharge of blank. I'm assuming this is obviously one of the former employees. And Ashton Carter will notify Blank in writing that it has been done and that the discharge will not be used against Blank in any way. Blank remains obligated to not disclose Nintendo's confidential business information to trade secrets. We assume this is probably the plaintiff in this regard trying to keep her name out of the legal documents here. I find this obviously interesting. Obviously you see Ashton Carter's representative, Terran Butcher, deputy general counsel, and then obviously there's no one listed specifically for Nintendo at this time. But this is the thing that Nintendo is required to send to all employees essentially that are contractors at Nintendo of America. Basically guaranteeing that, hey, talk about unionization all you want. Bring up concerns about your employment and unionization. You cannot be fired for any of that. And yeah, now going on for more backstory, he goes into this. And then he also mentioned this that Nintendo says a thankful for settlement then doubles down on the idea that Clinton was fired. Not for union talk before disclosing secrets. And so says Nintendo is thankful that a resolution was reached in the end and that would be better. So that we can continue to focus on ensuring that our working environment remains welcoming and supportive for all of our employees and associates. That approach is fundamental to our company values. As part of the public settlement, all parties remain obligated not to disclose Nintendo's confidential business information and trade secrets, which are paramount to our development process and product offerings. Now, I find this to be quite interesting when we're looking at the bigger picture because Nintendo is sort of admitting that they did something wrong in regards to Mackenzie Clifton. Maybe what Nintendo is trying to admit they did wrong was that Doug Bowser didn't respond to her questions on unions. So there was a meeting that happened in February according to Mackenzie where she raised the idea of unionization to Nintendo of America's president, Doug Bowser. And Doug Bowser basically didn't acknowledge or address the question. And Nintendo in hindsight might feel like that that was a mistake that obviously according to an employee's rights that they, you can't really ignore this kind of stuff. You need to at least acknowledge it if you're not gonna talk about it at a deeper level at that team meeting. And Doug Bowser basically didn't really acknowledge it is the claim that obviously Mackenzie was fired the following month for what they claim was supposedly a tweet revealing confidential information. I find it interesting, you could argue revealing any bug for any game is controversial information. But her tweet about an unnamed game going red is sort of innocuous. I mean, I think most of us can use our logical brains and go, that's a little weird thing to get fired over. Like you're not even referencing a specific game but you do work at Nintendo. So maybe talking about that, Nintendo does deem to be a fireable offense. What's interesting is, well, Nintendo clearly had no problem just, hey, NLRB, you want us to remind everyone about their rights to unionize and the right to talk about this and the right to ask questions to us about it? We'll absolutely do that. But when you're paying damages and back owed pay to this fired employee, it's hard to say you're doing this because well, you know, we still fired her for the right reasons and you wouldn't give her a dime. She wouldn't get a cent out of this settlement if she wasn't in part possibly let go due to some of these concerns. And it does appear that Ashton Carter, who is the one that's, you know, redacting information, it does appear that Ashton Carter is probably more at fault for the firing than Nintendo. At least that's my reading into this is that Ashton Carter has the bigger labor problem than Nintendo does. So well, the unionization thing was brought up to Nintendo and Ashton Carter was found to, yeah, you should, you know, because she alleged that Ashton Carter told her not to talk about this kind of stuff with Nintendo to talk about it with her, but it was actually her legal right to talk about it with Nintendo because Nintendo is actually Ashton Carter's boss in this situation. So Ashton Carter might be her manager, but Nintendo manages them. So they're the top of the totem pole in this situation and she has every right to talk about that with Nintendo of American employees, including Doug Bowser. So it appears that maybe there was a fault there where Ashton Carter was trying to silence her before she was fired. And, you know, it is what it is. And naturally Mackenzie is probably happy to get some back out pay that she feels like she deserves because she feels like she was wrongfully fired. And naturally this is something that is kind of a signal for everyone else who's a contract employee at Nintendo that don't just take your crap, you can do something about it. If you feel like you're being pressured by Ashton Carter managers to not talk about unions, you can do something about it. Go to the NLRB. NLRB has another open casing in Nintendo, by the way, for other allegations of workplace treatment, not just obviously this case of being fired wrongfully for unionization. So the NLRB is looking into that as well because naturally people being treated incorrectly in the workplace is a problem that exists at many companies. Heck, Activision Blizzard is dealing with stuff still today, a new lawsuit fired against them for more of this kind of stuff. So look, I don't know what to think in general. This obviously, it's hard to argue that this reflects poorly on all of Nintendo because these complaints and issues aren't coming up from Nintendo of Japan, which is the factual headquarters of Nintendo. A lot of these complaints, you know, are more recent in this particular lawsuit. So this would be under Doug Bowser and under everything else at Nintendo of America and Ashton Carter. And it does appear that Ashton Carter upon further research has been involved in a number of labor lawsuits over the last decade plus their parent company. They've lost a ton of these lawsuits. So Ashton Carter seems to have a problem with respecting the rights of employees that they hire. And unfortunately, no one really seems to be doing much about it. They just get in these lawsuits and then move on, get in these lawsuits and then move on and nothing seems to change. So in my opinion, I think Nintendo should move on from Ashton Carter. If I was Nintendo and we wanna look at this as maybe Doug Bowser was wrong to not directly answer the union question, but Ashton Carter is really the one at fault here for the way they handle that situation. Cause Doug Bowser didn't tell her, hey, don't ask me about unions. A manager from Ashton Carter did. Doug Bowser isn't the one that looked at her and fired her over a supposed tweet, Ashton Carter did. So this is one of those situations that I do think Nintendo might need to reassess their partnership with Ashton Carter. Maybe look into other options to handle their contract employees. I also think Nintendo is a big enough company that they don't really need to use a sub company to handle contractors. They could just do this internally where they have to hire on more employees and pay higher salaries and all that to deal with it maybe, but Nintendo is a really big company. And obviously just for the gaze of the public eye, it might be beneficial for Nintendo to just handle this stuff themselves. Cause I kind of feel like this particular thing would not have happened if Nintendo was the one handling it directly. Now, Nintendo could have told Ashton Carter to let the employee go, that's entirely possible. And I'm not saying that didn't happen, but I do think that maybe there's a better way for Nintendo to deal with contract employees and the hiring of them for game testing moving forward. And I personally would like to see them get rid of Ashton Carter, but I don't know. What do you guys think about this whole situation? Who do you think's more at fault? Do you think it's much to do about nothing? Do you think Mackenzie over blew things even though she ended up winning the settlement and getting this letter sent to all current contract employees to let them know about their rights and that if you feel like those rights are being violated the NLRB is going to do something about it. I think that this is really interesting and also really brave sometimes of a former employee to actually hold Nintendo and Ashton Carter accountable for some things that seem off. And yeah, we'll kind of see what happens. I gave my thoughts on this. I want to hear your two cents. And yeah, thank you guys for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed the video. Do you drop a like and subscribe? I hope this also helps further your guys's point that I'm not this massive Nintendo show that doesn't think they do any wrong. Nintendo could be very wrong in this situation. I tend to lean towards Ashton Carter more, but Nintendo hired them. So Nintendo is responsible for the actions of this company on their behalf. So we can't ignore that aspect either. I'm Nathaniel Rufflejans from The Dinner Prime. It's been awesome and I'll catch you in the next video.