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For more than a month, thousands of employees of Evolution, an online gambling company, have been on strike in Tbilisi, Georgia, protesting over pay, allegations of harassment, and unsafe working conditions.
The strike began on July 12 but escalated in August. Initially, says Giorgi Diasamidze, head of the employee union LABOR, the company threatened that a strike would cause it to pull out of the country entirely. (The company cut 1,000 jobs after the strike was announced.) But when striking workers escalated their protest by attempting to block the entrance to the building in mid-August, Diasamidze and employees who spoke to WIRED allege that non-uniformed private security people hired by the company beat the strikers.
“They are hiding their identities. They did not care about gender. [I know people] who have bruises, who are struggling to walk,“ says Diasamidze. Pictures and video shared with WIRED show apparent bruising and welts from the guards’ aggressive behavior toward workers, and a guard violently yanking a worker off a bench.
A handful of workers, including Mahare Patashuri, went on a hunger strike. “I can’t believe I am still alive,” Patashuri told WIRED in August. Last week, Patashuri was taken to the hospital after 28 days without food.
Evolution spokesperson Carl Linton said in a written statement that the company "has, and will continue to, work towards a resolution of the dispute within the established process and local law. Evolution firmly supports and respects the workers right to strike within the local legal framework."
"The union's decision to illegally block the entrances for working employees, violating their right according to Georgian law," he continued. "We faced challenges in maintaining full operational capacity. Since the blockade has remained, disruptions have caused us to review our presence in Georgia including through redundancies. This review has not been caused by the strike itself, but as a direct consequence of the illegal actions taken by the union."
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Evolution is reportedly in talks with the Nevada Gaming Control Board to get a license to operate in Las Vegas, the most valuable gaming market in the US. (The company did not comment on these talks.)
Though the strikes have continued to garner attention locally and in Sweden, where the company is based, the company seems relatively unfazed, even as workers hope that their struggles are taken into consideration by American regulators.
Evolution has licenses to operate in a handful of US states as well as several European countries. But Nevada would be a particular coup—the state brought in more than $15 billion in revenue from gambling in 2023 alone. Earlier this year, Evolution bought table gaming supplier Galaxy Gaming, through which it is applying for the license to operate in Las Vegas.
Kirk Hendrick, chair of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, said that licensing procedures are confidential, and refused to comment further when WIRED reached out about Evolution’s application.
Nevada’s local Culinary Workers Union and the Bartenders Union, which collectively represent some 60,000 workers at casinos in Las Vegas and Reno, have thrown their support behind the striking workers. A representative of the culinary union shared the group’s joint public statement in which it “urges the Nevada Gaming 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.”
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The online gambling industry as a whole was worth more than $65 billion in 2022, and the online casino market specifically is estimated to be worth $46 billion by 2029. The Covid-19 pandemic particularly energized the industry’s growth, as people stuck at home increasingly looked for entertainment online. Evolution itself saw more than $1 billion in profit in 2023, according to its own reports.
Evolution describes itself as a B2B company that develops and licenses the software for online casino businesses, specifically for live gaming. In practice, what that looks like is customers getting the experience of playing, say, blackjack at a table with a real dealer who uses real cards and makes real conversation, even while playing on their phones or computers. These online casinos, which Evolution calls “gaming studios,” are also open 24/7. Players create accounts and interact with the dealers through a chat function in the app and place bets like in a regular casino. Earlier this year, Evolution inked a deal with Caesar’s to open a gaming studio inside the group’s Tropicana Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Caesar’s did not respond to a request for comment.
Though other Swedish companies like H&M and Ericsson have more recognizable names, Evolution is nearly as large by market capitalization, and about 8,000 of its employees are based in Georgia, with Tbilisi being the company’s largest hub, according to an annual report. The country is an attractive market because of its relatively young, highly educated workforce, says Giedre Lelyte, head of gaming for UNI Global Union, a consortium of unions around the world of which the Georgian gaming workers are a part.
“They could find lots of people who spoke languages, and there were people who would speak Russian, Turkish, and obviously English,” she says. “And for them it was just an easy market.” The company is also able to pay people substantially lower wages than in other European markets. The workers who spoke to WIRED described not just low pay but difficult working conditions which include harassment by customers online as well as the company’s management.
“When [Evolution] came to Georgia in 2018, the salary they paid was considered relatively decent,” says Lelyte. But that is no longer the case. Workers say they make less than $450 a month. (Rent for a one-bedroom apartment can range from $500 to $750 a month in Tbilisi). Workers can, they allege, also lose some of that money through penalties levied against them for trivial infractions.
To create the realistic casino-like environment required, hosts must, in practice, stand at the tables on camera for eight hours a day. Workers claim they are penalized for needing to leave, even for health reasons. Over time, these violations can add up and workers can lose their jobs, they allege.
“You need to talk all the time. Even if during the betting time, even the six seconds, you’re quiet, you will lose a point, and that means you will lose part of the salary,” says Tamar Ansiani, a game host who is among the striking workers.
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In 2022, a dealer fainted at one of the tables live on camera during her shift. Ansiani alleges that other employees were not allowed to leave their own tables to help her, and those that did were penalized.
“Management,” she says, “doesn’t treat us like humans.”
Other employees reported alleged water leaking onto electrical equipment and shared photos of bug bites that they claim came from working at Evolution’s office.
Ansiani was on hunger strike as part of the protests, even sewing her own mouth with a stitch, but broke her fasting after more than two weeks without food. She, however, remains on the picket lines.
Workers have issued a series of demands, including overtime pay for holidays, better sanitary conditions within the offices, an onsite doctor, and a pay increase of 100 percent to more closely match what dealers in brick and mortar casinos make in Tbilisi.
Evolution's Linton says that the company offers "highly competitive salaries and benefits and pays roughly double to other comparable roles in Georgia." He adds: "In addition, we offer benefits such as health insurance, free gym, free language courses and scholarships for studying alongside working. We provide a first place of work and a stepping stone for a future career for thousands of young Georgians in a work environment that we are proud of."
Lelyte, however, noted in a comment to Swedish paper Svenska Dagbladet that workers at real-life casinos make closer to $1,000 a month.
