workinglife.ca

This is a link to an MSN/Wall Street Journal article about the impact that the gaming industry is having on the labour market:  Why a $75 Billion Industry Is Powering Down on Employees.  Interestingly, someone from placement firm Accenture refers to the idea of a “liquid workforce” that can be turned on and off like a tap.  The article regrettably does not reflect on the enormous social consequences of casualization.  The idea of having high school students working on a contract basis for video game companies may seem like capitalizing on the creativity of teenagers, but it is also child labour.  Casualization has existed for decades in the movie industry, as the article notes, but workers in television and film are unionized and thus able to weather the vagaries of contract work.  This is not the case for workers in the video game industry.  The fact that video games generate twice as many receipts every year as movies do world-wide suggests that the employment practices of the gaming industry deserve closer scrutiny.