 To say that Nintendo has been able to avoid controversy at least when it comes to a lot of labor disputes over the last half of years would be putting it lightly. Well, obviously we've seen so many labor complaints from things like Ubisoft and obviously Activision Blizzard, even EA, Microsoft to a smaller degree, although not so much in their gaming division, and even Sony, you know, closing studios down. I don't know that that's really, you know, a labor dispute, but obviously some people lost some jobs there. It's been one of those things where Nintendo has somehow stayed above the fray. Now, a lot of the complaints that are most notable happen to deal with abuse and abuse of a nature that human beings feel violated in a very specific way, specifically females. You guys know what we're talking about. We're not going to dive too deep into that stuff, but Nintendo has somehow stayed above the fray and not really had any issues, at least publicly put out there, with labor issues. And, you know, Nintendo has often been applauded for it, but it's notable that Nintendo isn't our friends, and they're not always even the friends of their own employees. And as we found out just really just now, Nintendo is embroiled in a bit of a dispute at the moment. They are being looked into by labor unions, because Nintendo has reportedly, you know, at least accusatorily violated an employee's labor rights. And this I find to be utterly fascinating. And more details are probably going to come out of this as it goes through the court system. And who knows if the unions are going to start sanctioning Nintendo. And this is in Nintendo America. So this is right in our backyard in Redmond, Washington. So let's take a look at the story that broke today from Stefan Tatillo. He's the former editor-in-chief of Kotaku, but obviously spun off to do his one of his own things here at Axios. And he says Nintendo is hit with a labor complaint. An unnamed worker, obviously, you know, workers not to be named till much later in the lawsuit, is alleging that Nintendo and a firm it uses for hiring contractors violated their legally protected right to unionize according to a new filing with the National Labor Relations Board. Why does this matter? The NLRB complaint filed on Friday brings one of gaming's most successful companies into the increasingly active conversation about worker rights in this sector. Here are the details. The allegations state that Nintendo of America and global hiring firm Ashton Carter engaged in concerted activities and made coercive actions against a worker interfering with their legally protected right to unionize. The exact claims of what happened are actually unclear at this time because the publicly posted docket for the complaint list broad charges but doesn't describe what is said to have occurred. This is the stuff that comes up later down the line. These are just the initial accusations, but it does indicate the allegations were likely to include claims of surveillance threats and retaliation of either a layoff or refusal to hire. Now this is, you know, just just some some broad basic claims in this filing. Nintendo of America, which is based in Reverend Washington, is a division of the Kyoto based gaming giant. The NLRB complaint was filed in Washington state. Now this is the NLRB is filing this complaint on behalf of the employee in the NLRB. They have been all over the place with unionizing stuff and have been able to impose sanctions on many companies. And right now are attempting to oppose sanctions on Activision Blizzard. So this is not like something to be taken lightly. It's just like an individual employee decided I'm going to sue Nintendo. No, no, they're, they're getting the NLRB involved, which is usually a much bigger deal. While Nintendo is well known, Aston Carter is a less visible player in the gaming industry. Online job listings show that it has recruited customer service and administration administrative contractors for Nintendo. So Nintendo does use this company to hire people. Neither company has responded to a request for comment by press time. If you go between the lines, unionization efforts in gaming have increased over the last year due to both simmering, worker discontent in an intense field and in reaction to high profile scandals and big game companies. And again, they're not calling this a massive scandal, but this is just a violation of worker rights. Some workers at Call of Duty and World of Warcraft giant Activision Blizzard announced the beginning of a union drive in January. The employees of subsidiary Raven software are currently in a labor dispute with Activision Management that it is being overseen by the NLRB. The bottom line is that Nintendo has at least publicly largely avoided any of the scandals rocking the industry. The NLRB complaint could change that. While an investigation will still follow, so there could be some, you know, even juicier details that could describe a potentially harmful Nintendo in this case, the companies could also be cleared. So it's of note that you never know. Maybe after investigation, Nintendo didn't do anything wrong after all. And this is just seemingly a single employee or former employee. But University of California, Berkeley professor and labor expert Harley Shakin tells Axios the situation shouldn't be ignored and quote, if the NLRB is listing these allegations, it's pretty serious and their ability to act on it is very real. Now, it is notable that this is through the NLRB and not an individual case because the NLRB does not press unless they have what they feel are actionable charges against Nintendo. And if you just look up at the initial allegations in the action card Nintendo America in the case number, it's very interesting, because obviously they're just in the initial letter to the charging policies. And when you go through this document, it requires citations. But here's the allegations that they have discharged. So lay off or refuse to hire, not salting. So this would be like, it's not an employee saying I am salty that you fired me or salty you wouldn't hire me. No, you wouldn't hire and or you fired me against one of my legally protected rights. So that that's one of the allegations, coercive statements with accused threats, promises of benefits, etc. So yeah, benefit if you do this, you know, threat to lose your job. If you do that concerted activities, which includes reality retaliation, discharge or discipline, and then coercive actions, which this is the one that I find interesting is surveillance. Now we all know about the infamous Nintendo ninjas. But the problem with legalities around the Nintendo ninjas on if they're surveilling you is that you are legally protected against said surveillance. So if this person felt like Nintendo was following them against their will and surveilling them against their will, that's, that's a massive human rights violation. That's not that's not just a union violation. So it's going to be really interesting to see what's happening here because a lot of these contract employees are starting to realize now that unionizing is a way to actually protect you as a contract employee. While there are many benefits of being a contract employee, one of the negatives is sometimes you're not treated fairly, and obviously becoming a union is a way to, you know, try to, you know, circumvent some of this. And obviously, a lot of the stems from the NLRB being able to prove that Nintendo is taking active actions to prevent this employee from unionizing, which is illegally protected right in the United States, companies cannot actively prevent you from unionizing, they can, you know, so when you hear about companies being like, Oh, we're going to offer raises or we're going to do this, none of that can be an incentive to not unionize. And it's very hard to prove that Oh, suddenly when someone wants to unionize and you offer them more benefits that you're not bribing them. So it's going to be quite interesting to see how this turns out. It's, as I said, you know, Nintendo could be acquitted of the charges. But what makes this worth paying attention to is that the NLRB is directly involved and they the NLRB in doing some just basic research on cases they've been involved in, they've got a turnover rate of about 95%. And that is huge. Basically, the NLRB does not get involved in union based cases that they can't win that that basically seems to be the gist of it. So chances are Nintendo is definitely guilty of something here. The extent of what they're guilty for is something I don't know. And and as the investigation goes on, this is going to be an ongoing developing story because I hope I mean, look, they're a business a for profit business, they make the look out for the bottom line. And reality is we could find out some very ugly details about how Nintendo handles some of their hiring process and how they treat some of their employees like an employee is under active surveillance. That's a problem. These are very serious accusations. These might not be at the level of the sexual harassment and other things that other lawsuits have intended and definitely not on the level of the sharing of nudes and some crazy crap that happened at division Blizzard. But while it might not be at that level that doesn't mean Nintendo is free of employee drama here, because this is could be something ugly could also be a nothing burger. So I guess we just play the waiting game and we wait for more information to come out. But this is the at least the start of Nintendo potentially being embroiled in other things the rest of the industry seems to be dealing with right now. So obviously, I hope that none of this is true, and that this employee is just seeking money for some unknown reason. Or if it is true, I hope Nintendo is snuffed out is called out and we do discover the depths at which Nintendo or if not Nintendo directly because this is the one thing to remember this could just be their hiring firm Ashton. It's kind of like their PR firm, Golan Harris, a lot of PR things you go into them and we get mad at all the lawsuits out there. That's really just Nintendo's law firm. Nintendo is not really pressing buttons at that law firm to go after copyright claims. That's just the law firm doing its job. And if it oversteps, Nintendo always obviously takes responsibility for that. And in this case, it would be Nintendo's responsibility for this hiring firm. But also these could be violations that are specific to Ashton Carter, which would obviously be their hiring firm. And this could make Nintendo rethink using that hiring firm moving forward. So there are layers to this that might protect Nintendo the brand. But you know, we'll just have to see how deep this goes. Anyways, guys, thank you so much for tuning in. And I'll catch you in the next video.