To the Card Kingdom community:
Many of you have seen news online of an ongoing unionization campaign for Card Kingdom employees. Until this point, we have been cautious when releasing information—there are rigorous legal requirements that ensure businesses uphold every employee’s right to free speech and organizing that we want to follow closely. We also want to honor our employees’ lived experiences, particularly with a topic that can be both highly political and highly personal.
On Tuesday, May 17th, we received a formal petition from the National Labor Relations Board for the creation of a union representing approximately 180 employees in our Ballard Warehouse. As we embark on this legal process, we wanted to share a bit more with you about our approach to business as owners and leaders of Card Kingdom.
We are proud of Card Kingdom.
Card Kingdom has been in business for over 22 years—starting with just two brothers in a basement. We have loved seeing the growth of the Magic community over the past two decades, and we are proud to have been part of this growth. Today, Card Kingdom has more than 400 employees with three brick-and-mortar stores. And we are just getting started.
We are also driven by the desire to do business better. Not just better for our revenue and profits, but better for our employees, for our customers, and for our communities. We continually reinvest in Card Kingdom and the communities where we live, play, and work. We have seen employees launch their careers with us. We have built partnerships with amazing nonprofits. And we hope that Card Kingdom has made Magic: The Gathering even just a little more accessible.
We trust our employees.
Of course, Card Kingdom would not be where it is today without our employees. Each and every one of them is passionate about our industry and brings this passion to their work. From the folks working in our warehouse picking cards for your orders to our engineering team hard at work updating our deckbuilding tools and our customer support team there to answer your questions—our employees are the heart and soul of Card Kingdom.
We also unquestionably uphold their right to free speech and organizing.
The question of whether or not to create a Card Kingdom union should not be up to us. Along with our co-owner James Buckley, we represent only three voices within the company. Particularly because Washington state is not a right-to-work state, we want to ensure that all employees who would be part of a union have the opportunity to represent their individual interests and opinions on the matter.
With the petition to the NLRB, the decision to create a union will now be in the hands of our employees through a secret ballot vote. Regardless of the result, we are here to support our employees. Our interest and intent are to transparently provide information about our policies and practices, so our employees feel confident when making this decision.
We are committed to doing better- always.
Throughout this process, we have heard feedback from our employees, customers, and communities—and we are grateful for this feedback. Card Kingdom is certainly not a perfect workplace, but we have always been committed to making improvements where and when they are needed. We wanted to reaffirm this commitment today and continue welcoming feedback that will help us make Card Kingdom the best place to work in tabletop gaming.
Part of our commitment to action is to improve our communication—both with you, our community, and with our employees. We are starting with this open letter, but you can find additional information at our.cardkingdom.com or you can listen to this new report from KUOW.
We are also endeavoring to provide more updates when facing peak times, product delays, and other disruptions that may impact you. We hope to see fewer of these as we continue recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic—in which case we hope to share more exciting news with you!
We are so thankful to our 400+ employees, our customers, and our wider community for making Card Kingdom one of the best online Magic retailers.
Sincerely,
John & Damon Morris