Rockstar cross-examines union organiser on private trade-union discussions managers had secretly monitored for years

Friday 11 September 2026: The second day of the trial of the IWGB Employment Tribunal claim against Rockstar Games focused heavily on private discussions between workers about their working conditions on a union-run Discord server.

Rockstar’s barrister cross-examined former Rockstar employee and union organiser Dayne Oram at length about messages criticising management. Oram said the server was demonstrably a forum in which working conditions were being discussed and trade-union organising was taking place – and that the two were “inextricable”.

Oram repeatedly rejected Rockstar’s attempt to characterise the server as simply a venue for “idle chit-chat” and “venting”, explaining that workplace complaints often formed the starting point for collective action organised via the server.

Oram emphasised that the server’s primary purpose was to recruit new members to the union. By 18 October 2025 – days before Rockstar’s dismissal of 31 union members – the IWGB had recruited enough members to apply for statutory recognition and to enter into collective bargaining with Rockstar. Oram stated that workers were aware of their employer’s hostility to unionisation, but felt that they were unable to make their voices heard in the absence of an established trade union.

Oram told the Tribunal that workers trusted others on the server not to make their discussions public, and that none had done so during the three-and-a-half-year period during which the server was active. Workers were speaking candidly among themselves about their working conditions with a view to improving these through collective action – without knowing that Rockstar were secretly monitoring the server via a mole that they had placed inside it.

Rockstar’s own case is that it was receiving information from inside the server from January 2023 onwards, and that this began when an informant alerted the company to the server and subsequently began supplying managers with material extracted from it.

Managers were kept informed of union meetings, training sessions, campaign preparations and membership numbers. When the union had recruited enough members to apply for statutory recognition and to bargain collectively with Rockstar, this was announced on the server and then secretly reported to Rockstar managers, who then took the decision to dismiss 31 union members.

An IWGB spokesperson said:

Rockstar was spying on its workers’ private trade-union discussions. The whole point of a union is to provide a forum for workers to speak candidly, organise, recruit and build collective power. Rockstar treated that activity as something to be spied upon and ultimately punished with dismissal.

The hearing continues on Monday.