TCGPlayer Union starts email campaign to support upcoming election

TCGPlayer is one of the most established and successful trading-cards sellers in the industry, a booming business that sells trading card games' cards such as Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Magic: The Gathering cards. Just last year, the company was acquired by its competitor, E-bay, as a subsidiary, after having "triple digital growth" in 2021 when compared to the previous year, a number not to be scoffed by any business, considering it was achieved in one of the COVID-19 pandemic peak years. E-bay effectively bought TCGPlayer in October 2022, for $295 million.

Ever since then, workers have reported a number of constantly growing issues regarding management, including a "ruthless anti-union campaign" when they started to unionized back in January. A few of the issues workers have reported include "a metric system that changes weekly", which has caused many workers to suffer penalties or even lose their jobs due to not meeting impossible goals they didn't even know they had.

The movement had begun unionizing back in 2020, but had to withdraw its request a few days before the vote, after the company hired famous union-busting firm Littler Mendelson, and subsequently began running "an intense anti-union campaign where workers were regularly ordered to attend captive audience meetings and disparaged by management in company communications.", the press release by CWA states.

It is now 2023, and TCGPlayer management has continued on pushing back against the union, TCG Union reiterates. To respond to the push-back, the organization has taken to social media, particularly Twitter, to ask for support. So far, it has gathered support from a few of the most notorious figures from the Magic:The Gathering community, such as Tolarian Community College's Brian Lewis, The Professor:

This last week, the union has sent a series of e-mails to gather support for their cause to many interested parties, one of which ended up posting the initiative on the game's main Subreddit:

Any supporters were asked to tag the company's main accounts on Twitter to press down on management and let their voices be heard. The Union election will take place next week, the organization states, and total numbers include more than 280 workers that would compose the future union, out of the 600 employees total in the authentication sector of TCGPlayer.

More details can be accessed in the main social media accounts for the organization, and in the video below: