The union election at Kickstarter is over and Kickstarter United has been certified by the NLRB as the union representing Kickstarter employees, the union announced on Twitter. Kickstarter United, which is affiliated with the Office and Professional Employees International Union, will now begin to communicate again (they had been under a media blackout), form a bargaining committee, and bargain for their first contract.

Kickstarter released a statement from CEO Aziz Hasan on the vote. “Today we learned that in a 46 to 37 vote, our staff has decided to unionize. We support and respect this decision, and we are proud of the fair and democratic process that got us here. We’ve worked hard over the last decade to build a different kind of company, one that measures its success by how well it achieves its mission: helping to bring creative projects to life. Our mission has been common ground for everyone here during this process, and it will continue to guide us as we enter this new phase together.”

We first reported on the unionization campaign back in September, when Evil Hat announced that they were delaying a Kickstarter while they studied the situation around the firing of employees involved in organizing the union (see “Evil Had Delays Kickstarter Over Labor Dispute”).  The organizing efforts were launched in March of 2019 and centered around pay equity, diversity in hiring, a voice in company decisions, and the effort to hold Kickstarter to its altruistic goals as a public benefit corporation (see "Kickstarter Reorganizes").

Unionization efforts were supported by a petition signed by project creators, including superstar writer Neil Gaiman.

Projects in ICv2’s two core geek culture categories were funded at record levels in 2019 (see “Comics Had Another Record Year on Kickstarter,” and “Another Record for Tabletop Games on Kickstarter”).