Within 24 hours of learning they would be without a job at the end of the month, 23 Experis Game Solutions workers in Milwaukee gathered to help each other work on their resumes.
“Everybody would come in after work hours,” said Anne Wiberg, a Milwaukee-based union organizer with International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in District 10 in Milwaukee. “It’s a very close-knit group. And in talking with them, you very quickly understand they enjoyed working with each other.”
After a year trying to form a union represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Experis workers were notified Aug. 2 that the Milwaukee location would shut down at the end of the month.Experis' parent company is ManpowerGroup, a staffing agency headquartered in Milwaukee.
It’s a decision the workers and union organizers believe was made in retaliation for the workers trying to form a union.
“Since early this year, we have been meeting with and bargaining in good faith with the IAM and we strongly refute any claims that we have committed unfair labor practices,”ManpowerGroup said in a statement.
The statement says the company's decision to close the Milwaukee location is due to "changing demands in the fast-moving gaming sector and overall performance of the location."
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers has filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing Experis of "breaking the law by freezing working conditions and closing the Milwaukee location," according to a statement from the union.
‘Very little job security’
The Experis workers are video game testers who troubleshoot games for different clients before they are available to the public.
The starting wage was $14 per hour, Wiberg said, and projects are short-lived.
“There’s very little job security,” Wiberg said. “It’s more than just what these workers experienced at Experis, which was all of those things as well. But it was also this larger context of an industry really ... was not sustainable work without living wages.”
ManpowerGroup opened the Experis location at its headquarters in Milwaukee in 2022. At the time of the opening, it planned to house up to 170 employees by fall 2023. The company was working with 40 to 50 clients.
But employees say the reality was different than they imagined, and that promised raises and promotions didn't materialize.
Workers began to talk about forming a union.
“When workers started working at this Milwaukee location, they were told that there were plans to grow the location,” Wiberg said. “They were hiring very aggressively when we started organizing, when we started first meeting. There were people being added (to the company) every week.”
The hiring ended “very abruptly” once the union went public, Wiberg said.
“There has not been a single person hired... since we went public with this campaign,” Wiberg said.
In a statement, ManpowerGroup said:
"There have been no 'freezes' on hiring, promotions, or raises. We’ve ensured we had the resources to meet client needs and have continued to promote and provide raises as appropriate, in line with our usual business processes and applicable law, and we've kept the union informed about these actions."
Last November the workers voted 35-4 to form a union and begin negotiating a first contract with Experis.
Bill LePinske, representative of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union, was bargaining this first contract on behalf of the Experis employees and said negotiations had been “dragging.”
Since March there have been 10 bargaining sessions.
“This really was a living wage contract,” LePinske said. “It wasn’t demands for free health insurance or multiple pensions or all these other things. These people wanted some basic rights, work and a living wage.”
In May, Experis gave 11 employees raises with the largest known increase being 35 cents an hour, according to Wiberg.
LePinske said Experis was asserting these workers were temporary with fights over language on layoffs, seniority and recall language.
“It turned into some pretty heated discussions at the bargaining table regarding their status,” LePinske said. “They’re not temporary employees. Employees weren’t told they were temporary. They’re paid by Experis, they get their benefits from Experis.”
In response to the the union saying these were full-time employees, not temporary, ManpowerGroup said:
"All of our Experis consultants are valued contingent employees. The terms of their employment have always been clearly communicated in our policies, agreements, and in discussions."
ManpowerGroup also said “Experis still employs consultants working in tech roles across Greater Milwaukee, and we remain committed to supporting those with IT skills to build their careers in Wisconsin.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: ManpowerGroup gets union complaint after Experis Game Solutions closes
