Content moderators at Sama, Meta’s content review subcontractor in Africa, protested today at the company’s Kenyan headquarters demanding April’s salary, while urging it to observe court orders prohibiting it from carrying out mass layoffs.
The protests came after Sama, in an email, instructed moderators to clear up with the company by May 11, a move that employees say goes against existing court orders.
the 184 the moderators sued Sama for allegedly illegally firing them, after it shut down its content review arm in March, and Majorel, the social media giant’s new partner in Africa, for blacklisting it on Meta’s instructions.
The court issued a temporary injunction on March 21. except Sama to effect any form of redundancy, and Goal of involving Majorel, which was also instructed to refrain from blacklisting moderators. Sama was ordered to continue to review content on Meta’s platforms and to be its sole provider in Africa pending determination of the case.
Sama told TechCrunch that he had sent the notice “to personnel whose contract had expired to go through our regular authorization process. This authorization process involves the return of company equipment to ensure that all final installments can be paid without deduction for that equipment, in accordance with Kenyan law.”
He said the moderators’ contracts ended in March after his contract with Meta expired, and he said he was only processing the final installments.
“We understand the frustration of our former employees that others led them to believe that they would all receive an indefinite salary while on leave, but that was not what the court ruled,” Sama said.
However, Sama’s vice president of global service delivery, Annpeace Alwala, in an affidavit dated April 12, and seen by TechCrunch, asked the court to vacate the temporary injunction saying keeping content moderators had ” a serious cost implication. Alwala had noted that it would cost about $90,000 a month to maintain the moderators and another $135,000 to process their work permits and bond.
The moderators filed the lawsuit alleging that Sama failed to issue dismissal notices, as required by Kenyan law. The lawsuit also claims, among other issues, that the moderators were not issued a 30-day notice of termination and that their terminal fees were tied to the signing of nondisclosure documents. Sama says that he observed the Kenyan law.
Sama, whose long list of clients includes OpenAI, canceled Meta’s contract and content review services, laying off 260 people in the process, to focus on tagging (machine vision data annotation) work, after the heat of a 2022 lawsuit in Kenya by its former content moderator, Daniel Motaung.
Motuang, a South African, had accused Sama and Meta of forced labor and human trafficking, unfair labor relations, union breaking and failure to provide “proper” mental health and psychosocial support. He was allegedly fired for organizing a strike in 2019 and trying to unionize Sama employees. The Sama and Majorel moderators voted earlier this week to form a union.
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