One of the witnesses in the ongoing Rockstar Games vs Garland & Others case has said he had "little interest" in evidence of unionisation efforts he was sent by an anonymous employee, prior to the developer laying off a substantial number of union Discord members.
This happened today as part of an on-going trial at Glasgow Tribunals Centre, as 31 former employees of the Grand Theft Auto 6 developer - represented by the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain (IWGB) - claim they were targeted and unlawfully dismissed as part of union-busting efforts at Rockstar. Rockstar, however, claims the staff were fired due to gross misconduct and the leaking of confidential information.
Charlie Kinloch, HR manager and co-studio operations director at Rockstar Lincoln, was scrutinised by a cross examiner representing several laid off Rockstar developers today. Kinloch was alleged to have misled the employment court with a statement made during an interim relief hearing in January this year.
The claimants argued one aspect of this alleged misleading of the courts stemmed from differences in Kinloch's statements at different times during the legal dispute. Kinloch, initially, claimed he didn't know employees were members of the IWGB union. Then, in a more recent statement , Kinlock said he had no way of knowing "definitively" which employees were members of the IWGB. Kinloch disputes this was a deliberate attempt to mislead the court, and believed the additional word may have been included when he was prompted to provide context on the matter.
The cross examiner then referred to messages sent to Kinloch by an anonymous employee (dubbed AB), which were later marked as evidence of gross misconduct and used in part to terminate employees last year. The claimants allege that AB was sending information he believed would interest Kinloch, including Discord discussions on union organising, distributing leaflets, and complaints about the workplace.
Kinloch rejected this suggestion that these messages identified certain individuals as IWGB members, instead emphasising that while he had a "broad" interest in general unionisation as far as it would impact the work of line managers, he had "little interest" unionisation conversions between employees. Instead, he said 'disparagement and misinformation about Rockstar' was his priority.
The question was then raised about why statements considered 'disparaging' did not result in terminations when they were first brought to his attention in early 2024, but instead 18 months later. To this, Kinloch suggests the build up to GTA 6's release played a major role: "I viewed those messages with the scrutiny Rockstar Games was under in the run up to GTA6, which was unprecedented."
Kinloch claimed media speculation and public interest was at a "peak", and if any of the disparaging comments were made public, it could "deal the company damage." He said such leaks - given the increased attention on the game - could result in financial harm, and that if someone decided to leak, that individual could benefit from doing so. He claims that in the run up to a major GTA 6 announcement the user growth in the employee Discord was growing, as were disparaging comments.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.eurogamer.net/rockstar-employment-tribunal-hr-manager-little-interest-union
