The people at video game publisher Interplay must really like their job. Enough to work without pay and without hope. The company, based right near where I used to work in Irvine, California, is essentially kaput. They have no money and no future. But according to this article, that hasn’t kept people from working without pay or benefits until the California’s Department of Industrial Relations, Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, forced them to shut down. It’s like an anti-strike:
The closure followed a snap inspection of Interplay’s offices by investigators, who found the company was without workers’ compensation insurance and had not paid employees. According to officials, there were 14 staffers on-site Friday during the inspection…
Despite the increasingly daunting scale of Interplay’s difficulties, Caen brushed them off. “I hope to have that [insurance] back by Monday or Tuesday,” he told the Register optimistically. Caen also had the esprit to question the semantics of Chuang’s article. “The company has not shut down. [The state] can’t do that. It can only let me not let employees work,” he said.
In addition to breaking the closure news, Chuang also confirmed that Interplay employees had not been paid for over a month, had no health insurance, and had been told to remove their belongings from the building due to a looming lockout by Arden.
Still, some of the Interplay staffers at the office on Friday held out a more genuine sense of hope than their employer. “The reason I stick around is that I’m a diehard loyalist and I love the people I work with,” IS manager Steve Jobes told the Register. “If there is any sliver of hope that Interplay may someday turn around, I want to be there to see it.”
I mean, I know what it’s like to love a job and employer enough to work hard for long hours and no extra compensation, but this is beyond the pale. No pay? No health insurance? No worker’s comp insurance? Put these people to work in the fields and put the migrant laborers to work in the offices!
Published by