The specialists who authenticate trading cards for eBay are fighting for a union contract

Thousands of cards arrive every week through TCGplayer’s Authentication Center in Syracuse, New York. Piece by piece Magic: the meetingPokémon or Yu-Gi-Oh card for sale at TCGplayer – the online trading card marketplace acquired by eBay in 2022 – is hand processed to ensure authenticity and evaluate condition. That work is completed by specialists charged with inspecting and receiving packages from sellers that range from a handful of cards to 14,000 in a given package. Julia Giacona, a receiving generalist at TCGplayer, said they touch tens of thousands of cards every week.

From 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., Giacona mainly counts, inspects and takes inventory Magic: the meetingPokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh cards. They spend most of the day standing by cabinets and filing the inspected cards. “It gets pretty tough when you’re standing in one place for an extended period of time, sitting,” Giacona said. “Many of my colleagues have sciatica problems. It hurts more not to move than to move.” Megan Wheeler, another receiving generalist who is currently pregnant, told Polygon that the job also affects the back and eyes: Reviewing cards often means bending over, straining your eyes to look at all the details of the card details, down to marks or notches. what impact value.

Receiving the cards is the first step in a three-part system, according to Wheeler. Wheeler said that after receipt and inspection, the cards go into a warehouse-like storage system before ultimately being picked up and shipped for individual orders; the cards purchased from TCGplayer touch many hands throughout the process. And those hands, and the people attached to them, are highly specialized; both Wheeler and Giacona are intimately familiar with trading cards and all their small, nuanced details. “It’s very detailed and you have to constantly pay attention to the little inconsistencies and watch out for fake cards and fixed symbols, things like that,” Giacona said.

TCGplayer employees, who have been members of Communications Workers of America for about a year, told eBay that Polygon eBay does not pay its hourly employees a fair wage for the work they do; Giacona said their role starts at $16.25 an hour, an amount they called insulting because of the specialized nature of the job. (They said the other departments, like Shipping, are also “critically underpaid.”) That’s why the union is meeting in Syracuse on Thursday, just after publishing a detailed report on both wages at TCGplayer and the cost of living of the warehouse location. The report – which surveyed 54 Authentication Center employees – says that 87% of employees “earn less than a living wage in Syracuse, New York for a single person without children.”

The union employs roughly 280 people in non-managerial jobs in sorting, research, receiving, shipping and other activities. TCGplayer employed more than 600 people when the company was acquired by eBay in 2022. TCGplayer employees won the National Labor Relations Board union elections on March 10 and do not have a contract with eBay at the time of this writing. With Thursday’s rally and subsequent report, TCGplayer employees hope to force eBay to “seriously sit down at the bargaining table and agree to reasonable contract terms,” ​​the union said in its report.

An eBay representative told Polygon: “When we began the negotiation process, we agreed with the CWA that we would discuss the non-economic components of the contract before discussing economic issues such as wages. We still have a handful of remaining non-economic proposals that we need to agree on before moving to economic discussions, which are expected to take place soon.” The representative said eBay and the union “meet and negotiate regularly,” including two sessions during the week of the meeting.

For employees like Wheeler, the appointments can’t come soon enough.

“My manager asked me, ‘Oh, have you painted the nursery?’” Wheeler, a union member, told Polygon. “And I’m like, I don’t have room for a nursery. I rent an apartment that I can barely afford. No, I don’t have room for a nursery, let alone to paint one.”

Giacona said the meeting will demonstrate the union’s solidarity with each other, their other colleagues and the Syracuse community as a whole. TCGplayer is one of Syracuse’s largest employers, they said, and higher wages could lead to more competitive pay elsewhere in the city. “(It will) enrich the community and the local economy as a whole,” Giacona said. “That is our hope.”

By 2022, eBay bought TCGplayer for $295 million. TCGplayer was born out of tabletop card company Ascension Gaming Network, founded in 2002, before relaunching as a marketplace in 2008, according to Syracuse.com. The company has verified over 115 million trading cards starting in 2022, including 32 million in 2021 alone. In a press release alongside eBay’s announcement, the company cited “substantial growth” in both the new and pre-owned trading card markets — a niche market that has boomed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before that, in 2021, TCGplayer founder and former CEO Chedy Hampson said in a press release that TCGplayer saw “triple-digit growth” in 2020. Hampson left the company shortly after the eBay saleaccording to Syracuse.com.

eBay as a whole seems to be doing quite well: 2023 revenue rose 3% to bring in $10.1 billion. Meanwhile, workers say, wages for TCGplayer employees start at the New York state minimum wage of $15 per hour, “and increase only a few dollars after years of working for the company,” the report said. The report also says that 60% of workers earn less than $19 per hour, which the report says is not enough to cover the cost of living in the area.

“We hear our team members’ concerns about wages,” the eBay representative said, “and remain committed to reaching a collective bargaining agreement that positions our team and company for continued growth and success.”

Workers hope the union’s report and Thursday’s meeting will encourage eBay to come to the table to agree on a contract that addresses fair pay issues at the company.

“I put everything, with all my heart, into my work,” Wheeler said. “And to see that come back with almost nothing, to hear them say they care but not show it… to experience something that should be as amazing as pregnancy and preparing for a family , and to worry about choosing between my job and my family . It feels terrible. It feels like it belongs much further in the past than 2024.”