I am waiting for Union defense force GAF to show up and tell us why this is ok.
Nobody thinks this, in particular, is a positive. Being in favor of unionization and collective action by workers doesn't mean being in favor of every single action taken by every single union, just like being a fan of AAA video games doesn't mean you have to sign off on everything EA does.
In this case the union is the American Federation of Musicians. They represent a pretty broad swathe of performing musicians -- people in orchestras, session players, and so on. They provide a lot of very useful services -- health care, retirement, and instrument insurance for musicians, pre-negotiated rates so performers don't have to haggle over the price on every twenty second jingle for a mattress store, etc.
The place where the problem comes in is that they negotiate contract terms for musicians to use when working in specific industries, and their requests for video games were so far off-base from what publishers would actually be willing to sign that no one's actually used it since it was released. Without more info it's hard to say whether this is because the union leaders aren't really considering what's important in the videogame business, or if it's because they want to force some level of consistency with other industries even when it's totally implausible to do so, or what, but I feel confident saying that regardless of their motives, a contract that no one's used for two years and no members have approved is a big mistake.
In this particular case, it seems like the union would actually be working out much better for
everyone, both the performers and the publishers, if it was actually following the collective lead of its members instead of pushing decisions from the top down.
