WotC Kotaku reports that "Wizards Of The Coast Deadnamed Trans Employees In Front Of Their Colleagues During Union Election, Apologized, Then Did It Again"

[Alzrius]

I didn't see a thread on this:

WOTC Deadnamed Its Trans Employees During Union Election, Twice

'The actions here are...at odds with the kindness and support I experience daily'

kotaku.com

Essentially, WotC created an internal website regarding the upcoming election for unionization among their employees, including a list of employees eligible to vote with the National Labor Relations Board (as part of voting for employees who worked remotely). This list, which was accessible to everyone at the company, deadnamed multiple trans employees. When this was pointed out to them, WotC removed the list and instead switched the voting process for remote-work employees to an email system.

However, when the time came to actually vote, those employees found that the list given to the NLRB was the same one that WotC had used previously, deadnames and all. The article, at this point, confirms that "Union elections with the NLRB do not require use of legal names nor showing of ID—they just require employees confirming they are the same person that is on the list the NLRB is given." In contrast to this, when WotC sent around an apology email (included in the article), they stated that "The use of those legal names versus preferred names was part of a legal process." No explanation is given as to exactly what legal process this was a part of.

For people who wonder why some of us seem to be perpetually exasperated with WotC, and can't give them the benefit of the doubt, recurring things like this, for which other people pay the price, are why.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I understand why you have your disdain... I just wonder why you keep hanging around places involving WotC to maintain your disdain rather than just moving on with your life and go to places where you no longer have to deal with them.

 

[darjr]

Ugh.

 

[Alzrius]

I understand why you have your disdain... I just wonder why you keep hanging around places involving WotC to maintain your disdain rather than just moving on with your life and go to places where you no longer have to deal with them.

Because I think injustice deserves a stronger reaction than just "Meh, not my problem." Or even worse, a reaction of "I don't care, so why should anyone else? Why don't they just move on with their lives and go to places where they no longer have to deal with unpleasant things?"

 

[darjr]

I understand why you have your disdain... I just wonder why you keep hanging around places involving WotC to maintain your disdain rather than just moving on with your life and go to places where you no longer have to deal with them.

This is a terrible take.

 

[saviirkad]

The article states the names provided were the legal names of staff. This is consistent with my own experience with HR records, that legal information is maintained even if the office culture is accepting and only uses current names.

The charitable read is that someone in HR sent the list of staff as they know it to be to both the NLRB and the workers at the same time, unaware of the harm being done. When the issue was raised from what was sent to staff, and an attempt to correct it was made, it's possible that those involved with that were unaware that the same list went out to the NLRB.

That's just me looking for a charitable read, doesn't mean that's how it actually went down nor does it excuse the harm caused.

I had my own fights with the HR of my job to silo this same information to just their record keeping process, because we had similar incidents. HR being unaware and sending that list to IT for account creation, to staffing units who handle scheduling and assignments, leading to usernames being X but the person goes by Y, of posted schedules listing X but Y shows up.

Which inevitably led to people talking about it, even if they were innocently unaware or just not familiar with how to talk about such a thing. Like "hey I fixed a mistake by username X, who is that?" or "X is assigned to help with my task but they haven't showed up. Y is here, was this a scheduling mix-up?" Or people pointing Y out as being the person with the X username, etc.

It was born from ignorance, not malice, but it created a harmful environment that I worked to shut down. I just wonder if that's what happened here, and I hope the concerted effort is to make sure this never happens again. The damage is done and can't just be fixed, and it should never have happened but they can make sure it doesn't happen again.

 

[Koloth]

Same issue that folks who change names due to marriage or no longer married have to deal with. Most organizations do not have "One Master List" that all divisions use. Instead each division has its own list, often pulled from a HR or Payroll list, but not always updated until someone points out an error. Often, that division only updates its own list and doesn't communicate the error back to the other divisions. The result is that even if a name error is corrected in one place, it remains an error in other places.

Most likely nothing despicable here, just a bureaucracy being a bureaucracy.

 

[DEFCON 1]

This is a terrible take.

That's fine. I'm okay with you disagreeing with me. But my attitude has always been the same-- I don't go to any of the threads or subforums involving games and/or companies I don't care about, because I have better things to do with my time. So it just perplexes me why some many people seem to want to keep themselves perpetually upset rather than just washing their hands of the game/company they hate. I have never seen the point.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I have a trans friend that a bunch of my other friends have been friends with longer than me. They still sometimes deadname her just cause of how used to the old name they were (though it’s getting rarer as they get used to it).
Having multiple separate lists that were not all updated is likely the case as mentioned.

 

[darjr]

That's fine. I'm okay with you disagreeing with me. But my attitude has always been the same-- I don't go to any of the threads or subforums involving games and/or companies I don't care about, because I have better things to do with my time. So it just perplexes me why some many people seem to want to keep themselves perpetually upset rather than just washing their hands of the game/company they hate. I have never seen the point.

So they should stay out of that bar, or restaurant, or city or state or county too then?

That’s what that first post of yours sounds like to me in the given context.

I’m not sure you meant anything like that, I hope so anyway. Hence my “bad take”.