La Guilde (an employer's association that represents the interests of a large number of bosses in the Québec game industry) recently announced their "diversity and inclusion plan." I have a lot of misgivings about this plan and I want to take some time to explain why.

The plan itself is still incredibly vague and makes no concrete promises when it comes to actually allocating resources to the project, which I think reflects a lot of the problems with diversity initiatives led by business owners in general.

As an employer's association, La Guilde represents the interests of people who profit from the exploitation of workers in the game industry. This means that, structurally speaking, they're opposed to anything that would cost companies money or directly empower workers.

This is why, for example, employees have no voting power in La Guilde. It's bosses that vote on everything (including from Ubisoft, EA, Square Enix, and other multinationals), despite La Guilde's claims to represent "game developers" in Québec.

Diversity initiatives cost money. There's no way around that. Whether you're paying for consultants, spending more time to expand your recruitment pool, investigating harassment, implementing trainings, or paying marginalized workers more, it all impacts the bottom line.

The fact that this plan is being announced at all is likely due to mounting public pressure, and La Guilde's poor reputation in this field (which I think can be explained by the things I listed above). We need to keep up that pressure if we want anything good to come of this.

While I'm sure there are people involved who have great intentions and are genuinely concerned about these issues, for many of the employers that make up La Guilde's membership, diversity and inclusion is nothing but a PR exercise.

Actually addressing the structural roots of racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia and other forms of oppression would mean challenging capitalism -- something no business owner is likely to support.

That means talking about how companies profit from suppressing the wages of marginalized workers, and pitting us against one another in competition for increasingly scarce and precarious jobs.

It means acknowledging that marginalized workers are blacklisted from this industry for speaking up about poor working conditions, attempting to organize, or simply pissing off people in positions of power.

It means challenging their own position as employers/owners of capital, and the power they wield over marginalized workers' livelihoods (especially those on visas, entry-level employees, and contractors) a power imbalance which all too frequently leads to abuse & sexual violence.

It means giving workers more time off, paid parental leave, mental health support, benefits, pay transparency, and democratic accountability processes, not just for a few relatively well-paid employees, but across the board.

But most of all, it means empowering marginalized workers and ceding them the power to collectively determine how to improve their own lives and working conditions, rather than relying on a few token figures who often happen to share the same class position as the bosses.

La Guilde will never support these kinds of D&I initiatives, not unless they're forced to. It's going to be up to us as game workers to build the kind of collective power needed to make these demands a reality. Bosses aren't going to save us from themselves.