Brian O’Nolan

The social media platform Meta Platforms services 3 billion users across its subsidiaries Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and Threads. Meta employs an estimated 60,000–80,000 employees as of 2023.^[1] Facebook subcontracts an additional estimated 15,000 content moderators around the world.^[2] The majority of unionized workers at Meta in the United States are contractors working at Meta offices as security guards, janitors, bus drivers and culinary staff. In Germany and Kenya, content moderators have formed unions and a works council respectively.

Meta employs many remote technical employees and visa workers, which makes unionization complicated in terms of employee rights across different countries. Contract workers have been at the forefront of attempting to improve worker conditions through unionization.

Meta utilizes H1B visa workers within the US, who are often paid less and are particularly vulnerable to exploitation given visas can be revoked if laid off, forcing workers and their families to leave the country within days. Many tech companies are motivated to retain visa workers due to lower costs, and have instituted performance firings rather than mass layoffs to maintain the ability to obtain visas to hire foreign workers at lower cost. Meta has faced legal action for preferentially hiring visa workers at lower cost, with roughly 15% of their US workforce on a visa^[3].

Contract workers in the US and abroad do not receive the same compensation or benefits, including healthcare, vacation, sick time, parental leave and stock, as full time employees. Meta uses contract workers to provide many essential services for both technical and campus services^[4].

The use of contractors effectively creates different "classes" of employees, who are employed by various subcontractors. Contract workers are more vulnerable to sudden job loss, and companies can avoid having to report layoffs when these workers are employed through 3rd parties. Contract workers can be expected to work harder in the hopes of being hired as a permanent employee with more job security and benefits.

The exact number of contract workers Meta employs is unknown, but some estimates point to contractors making up over 50% of their total workforce.

Meta has outsourced work to India and Africa to exploit lower wages driven by existing racial, class, gender and caste dynamics. Contractors in these countries have reported poor working conditions, psychological trauma and anti-labor tactics^[5].

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) investigated what it called "widespread" racial discrimination against Black employees and candidates in 2021^[6]. In 2024, Palestinian-American employee Hamas Farrad brought forth a lawsuit, claiming he was fired due to speaking out against the war in Palestine because of company-bias, including Meta allegedly deleting employee internal posts mentioning deaths of relatives in Gaza, Palestinian refugees in an internal group dedicated to refugee support, and a letter from employees to executives raising concerns about Meta’s moderation of content related to Palestinians^[7][8].

Approximately 35% of roles at the company are occupied by women^[9]. A number of female employees have brought forth complaints regarding gender disparity and sexual harassment. Kelly Stonelake, a prior executive at Meta, has revealed a culture of discrimination and sexual harassment in her current lawsuit. In 2025, former director of public policy Sarah Wynn-Williams published a memoir Careless People about her experiences of sexual harassment and labor issues related to medical and maternity leave while at the company.

Strict non-disclosure agreements have been utilized to limit worker organizing. In 2024, the NLRB ruled that Meta had unlawfully restricted employees right to organize, including "non-disparagement and confidentiality restrictions (that) prohibited former employees from raising workplace concerns with co-workers, labor organizations, or the public, preventing them from finding support when dealing with labor disputes."

Employees are forbidden from discussing topics the company decides are disruptive, including issues around women's healthcare (abortion), vaccination, politics, and LGBTQ rights^[10]. Employees can be reprimanded and fired for discussing these topics at work or on internal platforms^[11].

Large-scale layoffs disproportionately impacted older employees in 2025, including workers who had taken medical, maternity and mandated military leave^[12][13]. Non-disclosure and arbitration agreements have been utilized to try to prevent class-actions.

Meta utilizes controversial stack ranking for employees, which has been abandoned by other companies due to the negative impact on turnover, culture, and reduction in productivity. In 2025, Meta announced they were asking managers to regularly meet quotas to rate approximately 20% of their workers as poor performers. Workers expressed concerns that quotas would drive fear, pit workers against each other, and that publicly labeling performance would impact workers abilities to get jobs elsewhere^[14].

The utilization of contract workers for many roles prevents full transparency in terms of the true number of workers impacted by layoffs and shifting labor dynamics.

In January 2025, Meta announced they would be ending previously successful DEI programs which had supported underrepresented workers. Policies were also updated that specifically targeted LGBTQ workers, including updating content policies to allow calling LGBTQ people mentally ill, removing the mention of gender affirming care from the employee healthcare benefits website, and instructions to facilities to remove menstrual products from bathrooms utilized by trans workers. Numerous organizations have called on Meta to reaffirm protections for LGBTQ employees, including Prospect, a trade union in the UK who stated: "It’s important that employers have robust and explicitly LGBTQ+ inclusive policies against discrimination, bullying and harassment, to ensure all staff to feel confident raising concerns.”

Meta stated in early 2025 they will utilize AI to replace mid-level engineers.. While AI replacement has been utilized as an explanation for layoffs, employees across the tech industry have raised concerns that workloads have not decreased and workers are required to work longer hours driven by the loss of workers and fear for job safety.

There are 5,000 content moderators in Germany. Those employed by Telus International and Majorel service several social media platforms including Facebook and Instagram.^[15]

Cengiz Haksöz who is employed by Telus International, moderates content for Facebook and Instagram. Shortly after giving a testimony on June 27, 2023, to the German Bundestag Committee on Digitization regarding his working conditions, Haksöz was placed on paid-leave and banned from the company premises in Essen. The company alleges he violated his non-disclosure agreement. As the chair of electoral board, Haksöz was responsible for facilitating the works council election which was ongoing. Ver.di union filed an objection against management's obstruction to the election.^[16] The Essen Labour Court [de] ruled in favor of Haksöz and ordered the company to let him return.^[15] The works council election [de] commenced on July 7, with the ver.di union list receiving 80% of employee votes, or 14 of 17 seats on the works council.^[17]

Connect union represents 20 critical-infrastructure engineers at Meta's data center in Clonee, County Meath, Ireland. In response to proposed shift schedule changes, the Connect union threatened to go on a 24-hour strike.^[18] The strike was replaced by a labor court proceeding instead.^[19]

In 2021 Amnesty International published a brief documenting labor issues for contract workers at Meta. Guillermo Camacho Equez (Camacho), a contracted cleaner and trade union representative of the Cleaners and Allied Independent Workers Union (CAIWU) was dismissed after campaigning for fair working conditions and against the excessive workload of mostly Black, and Latino cleaners at Meta’s London office on Brock Street.

150 content moderators, who contract for Meta, ByteDance and OpenAI gathered in Nairobi, Kenya to launch the first African Content Moderators Union on May 1, 2023. This union was launched 4 years after Daniel Motaung was fired and retaliated against for organizing at Sama, which contracts for Facebook.^[20]

Full time employees are not currently unionized, although some contractors indirectly employed by Meta are. In April 2024, the NLRB ruled that Meta had unlawfully restricted employees right to organize, including "non-disparagement and confidentiality restrictions (that) prohibited former employees from raising workplace concerns with co-workers, labor organizations, or the public, preventing them from finding support when dealing with labor disputes. These restrictions would also apply even if former employees' statements were truthful." As part of that ruling, "Meta must also distribute a notice to employees informing them of their right to unionize under the National Labor Relations Act, and stating that the company will not interfere with such organization."^[21]

Some contractors employed by Meta working onsite including security guards, janitors, bus drivers and culinary staff are unionized.^[22] Previous efforts to unionize content moderators and mail room sorters were unsuccessful.

Culinary and cafeteria staff employed by FlagShip, serve Facebook offices in Menlo Park, Fremont, Seattle and New York City.^[23] At Facebook's headquarter in Menlo Park, 500 cafeteria workers voted to unionize with UNITE HERE union in 2017.^[24] Facebook contracts multiple IT outsourcing providers including Accenture, Cognizant, TaskUs, and Wipro to provide hundreds of content moderators within the United States.^[25] With the support of Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (Communications Workers of America), moderators at Wipro organized in 2020 for better working conditions including pay-parity with employees of Facebook. Workers left due to alleged retaliation.^[26] In the smallest NLRB election at Meta, 46 mail room sorters employed by Canon Production Printing (Canon Inc. subsidiary) voted in April 2022 whether to affiliate with Teamsters union. 46 workers voted, 23 in favor and 23 against.^[22] In October, the NLRB ruled that the election was not successful.^[27]

• Censorship of the word "union" on work platforms^[28]
• Reliance on contract and visa workers, separating workers and creating job instability
• Management quizzing workers on union activities and threats to outsource jobs^[29]
• Firing or laying workers who have attempted to organize^[30]
• Restricting employee organizing attempts through unlawful non-disparagement and confidentiality restrictions^[31]

• Content moderators manifesto (Germany)