Will International Solidarity Turn the Tables in Favor of Striking Gaming Workers in Georgia?

Four thousand workers at the online gaming company Evolution in Tbilisi, Georgia, walked off the job in July protesting low wages, dangerous working conditions, and harassment.

Four months in, their strike is one of the largest and longest that this Eastern European country has ever seen. In August, some strikers sewed their mouths shut with a needle and thread in a hunger strike that resulted in multiple hospitalizations.

A union victory would represent not only a sea change in the Georgian labor movement, but also a major breakthrough in beating back employers who scour the globe for cheap, non-union labor. Companies outsource expecting that workers won’t fight back.

Workers want Evolution to return to bargaining and agree to boost their salaries, which are currently $200 to $250 per month for a 40-hour-plus week. The average salary in Georgia is $700 a month.

The company has responded with a scorched-earth campaign: cutting 1,000 jobs, filing a lawsuit against 700 strikers, and hiring 200 security guards to throw workers off picket lines.

The security guards beat workers up. “They are hiding their identities,” Giorgi Diasamidze, head of the parent union LABOR, told Wired magazine in September. “They did not care about gender. [I know people] who have bruises, who are struggling to walk.”

‘NO CHOICE BUT TO STRIKE’

When Evolution, a multibillion-dollar Swedish-owned company, opened its production studio in Georgia’s capital city in 2018, people rushed to apply, expecting good pay and benefits.

Eight thousand young workers, mostly students or recent graduates, took jobs as dealers, game managers, and shufflers. They would be livestreaming casino games like baccarat, poker, blackjack, and roulette to gamblers worldwide.

But the euphoria was short-lived, as working conditions deteriorated. Once, a worker passed out at the table after being denied sick leave. When co-workers rushed over, managers scolded them and told them to leave the worker on the floor. Another worker contracted scabies in the studio.

Workers decry unsanitary and dangerous working conditions: biting insects, water leaking onto electrical systems, and inadequate ventilation and air conditioning.

The gaming workers reached a majority in 2022 to join the union EVO; its parent union is called LABOR. Since then, Evolution has stonewalled bargaining and mediation efforts have failed.

Meanwhile, housing costs and inflation soared after Russia invaded Ukraine. Between 2022 and 2024, rents shot up 108 percent in Tbilisi, while wages stagnated.

Striker Nanuka Abramashvili-Nadiradze said her pitiful earnings went from $1.18 an hour when she was hired two years ago to $1.40 now. Evolution made $1.7 billion in revenue and $1 billion in profits last year.

“We asked for basic things, like having a doctor on site,” said worker Makhare Patashuri, “and addressing sanitation issues, including the spread of skin diseases. They rejected everything, leaving us no choice but to strike.”

REPLACING UNION WORKERS

Evolution’s platform sells its games to companies like MGM and Caesars. It’s a way for these companies to cash in on the growth of online gambling revenue by hosting online table games without having to pay union wages and benefits.

The companies make virtually the same margins they would in a casino, with none of the overhead. Evolution pays $1 to $2 per hour to workers in Georgia—instead of 20 times as much to workers in the United States.

This outsourcing is a major threat to workers in the U.S.’s heavily unionized gambling industry, especially at hotels and restaurants that provide high-quality jobs for hundreds of thousands of workers.

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That threat is also what makes the U.S. a major source of leverage. Outsourcing is so fundamental to Evolution’s business model that gambling regulations in the U.S. might be the only thing preventing it from fully outsourcing virtual casino jobs.

Yet due to certain state laws, Evolution operates numerous facilities within the U.S., including in Philadelphia, Atlantic City, Fairfield, Connecticut, and Detroit. In May, the New Jersey Casino Redevelopment Authority approved its plans to build a $75 million studio in Atlantic City.

Evolution further consolidated its U.S. market share in July by acquiring Galaxy Gaming, a leading casino games provider based in Las Vegas.

GLOBAL SOLIDARITY

The U.S. labor movement is already recognizing the threat that Evolution’s business model poses, and the potential power of international solidarity.

The United Auto Workers, which represents thousands of casino dealers, has launched organizing campaigns at Evolution facilities around the country. Bargaining staff for the UAW’s Gaming Division held a solidarity call with strikers on the picket line in Georgia.

The Culinary Union Local 226, the 50,000-member UNITE HERE affiliate in Las Vegas, went to the Nevada Gaming Commission to ask regulators to investigate Evolution’s labor practices as it considers approving licenses for its expansion into the Vegas market. The union called on the commission to reject Evolution’s application “if it continues to refuse to treat its employees with respect and provide for decent wages and safe working conditions.”

The Georgian gaming workers also got a solidarity letter from the AFL-CIO in July.

UNI Global, the international federation, is organizing affiliate unions in its gaming division around the world to stand in solidarity. Two Swedish unions, Unionen and the Engineers, met with Evolution CEO Martin Carlesund and offered to mediate bargaining with the Georgian strikers.

Carlesund told them, “We refuse to negotiate with criminals.”

STRIKES ALONG THE SUPPLY CHAIN

Solidarity has helped bolster the spirit of strikers and build pressure on Evolution. But the company still refuses to bargain in Georgia. Winning will likely require deeper international solidarity, most importantly between workers within the company’s supply chain.

Evolution hires workers around the world to do the same job for vastly different wages. Coordinated international bargaining would enable the workers to bargain all together. Coordinated work stoppages could bring its international divide-and-conquer strategy to an end.

In recent decades, workers around the world have struggled to beat back the general “race to the bottom” in the garment industry, heavy manufacturing, mining, customer service, agriculture, and dozens of other industries. Gaming is next.

If Evolution defeats the union in Georgia, other gaming companies will surely adopt its model. If the workers prevail, they will show the path forward in an increasingly interconnected global labor movement.

What can you do to help?

1. Donate to the union’s strike fund.
2. Sign and share the LabourStart petition.
3. Work with organizers to hold a protest action at an Evolution studio in Fairfield, Connecticut, Philadelphia, Atlantic City, or Detroit.
4. Send a letter of solidarity from your union to strikers at Evolution Gaming in Georgia.

Questions? Send a message to srosenblumlarson[at]solidaritycenter[dot]org.

Simon Rosenblum-Larson is a Program Officer and Andrew Tillett-Saks is the Organizing Director at the Solidarity Center.