Kenyan moderators working for Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and ChatGPT have joined efforts by organizing a labor union in order to urge employers to improve working conditions, local media has reported.
About 200 content moderators from Sama and Majorel, subcontractors of the above-mentioned companies, held a meeting in Nairobi. They gathered on Labor Day to vote to create a union to address issues they are facing on a daily basis as workers of big tech enterprises, including mistreatment, discrimination, low payments, unfair and unjustified layoffs, and union-busting.
It is not the first time the employees tried to organize a union. In 2019, Nairobi-based workers from Sama, the largest outsourcing partner of Meta in Africa, attempted to unionize in order to jointly demand better working conditions and higher salaries.
According to Daniel Motaung, a former content moderator who was sacked following the attempt to form a union, content moderation is experiencing a serious crisis, while the employees "are paying for it with their lives."
"They serve as the first line of defense against harmful content, yet they face hazardous work conditions without hazard pay. Mental health support is severely lacking, job security is scarce, and some moderators feel silenced by strict non-disclosure agreements," he said, as cited by local media.
In May last year, he filed a lawsuit accusing Meta and Sama of union busting, wage theft, racial discrimination, psychological torture, unequal pay for equal work, human trafficking, and other offenses.
* Meta and Facebook are banned in Russia over extremist activities