Respect workers right to unionise, ELRC tells Facebook

Kira Okumu, Senior Associate

Employment | Corporate Commercial | Arbitration & Disputes

The Employment and Labour Relations Court has this week ruled that Meta, Facebook parent company, must respect the laws of Kenya. This comes after the Court of Appeal dismissed an application by Meta claiming Kenyan courts lack jurisdiction over it because it is a foreign company registered outside.

Currently, three lawsuits have been filed against Meta, for its unwillingness to work with organized labour. Workers sued Meta, which used third-party companies to facilitate content moderation in Kenya, for failing to provide adequate pay, training, or health care for employees who are regularly required to watch images of rape, murder and torture.

In violation of Kenyan law, subcontractors working for Meta fired workers who attempted to unionize last year. When these cases went to court, the company struck back, alleging that third-party firms like Sama, a Kenyan AI firm, were the ones responsible for the labour law violations. The courts disagreed and ruled that they had the power “to enforce alleged violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms” by Meta and whatever companies it had subcontracted.

By the end of last year, 184 content moderators had sued Meta and its contractors, claiming that the companies fired them as a direct response to their attempts to unionize their workplaces.

Talks between Meta, Sama, and their employees stalled in October despite pressure from courts. During this period, workers have been left unpaid for eight months and have been unable to afford food and rent despite still being legally employed by Sama and Meta. Many of them have had to rely on an online crowdfunding campaign to survive.

The prosecution’s lawyers filed a motion to hold Meta in contempt as it had breached a court order requiring it to pay the wages of hundreds of its content moderators. But in a turn of events, Kenyan courts sided with the tech firm, stating it did not “deliberately and contemptuously” breach court orders.

Meta has responded to these complaints by discreetly contracting its moderation to another company.