Ready for judgment. At 3:19 p.m. this afternoon, the trial brought by some of the workers who moderated content for Meta in Barcelona against the dismissal of almost the entire workforce, 2,062 workers out of a total of 2,114, was concluded.
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The North American multinational contracted the services of the call center company CCC in 2018, which was later absorbed by the Canadian group Telus. Therefore, the defendants were these companies and some from the same group, as well as the European subsidiary of Mark Zuckerberg’s tech giant.
Some of the workers, represented by the independent and union worker force union (FIST), consider the redundancy plan announced on April 3, 2025, irregular, which led to the immediate closure of the offices in the Glòries tower in Barcelona. That same day, employees were sent home on paid leave. The lawsuit seeks the nullification of the dismissal and the reinstatement of all workers. Estimated compensations could reach 90 million euros.
The representatives of the half dozen companies involved based their defense on the fact that the agreement for the closure was signed by more than 90% of the workers, although the vote was not secret but conducted through a digital mechanism, as denounced by the secretary of the complaining union, Miguel Ángel Bach.
The complainants estimate that the company closure was retaliation and revenge for the avalanche of lawsuits that workers from the Glòries tower had filed against the company. A few days before the company announced the redundancy plan, a judge in Barcelona had ruled in favor of the workers in a wage discrimination lawsuit: moderators working in languages such as Spanish, Catalan, Italian, or Portuguese were paid significantly less than those working in Nordic languages. According to the plaintiffs, the company closed to avoid complying with the wage equalization mandated by the court.
The work done in Barcelona was transferred to the moderation centers that Telus has in Riga (Latvia) and Essen (Germany).
The Barcelona offices of META had another significant legal front open, stemming from the epidemic of mental illnesses, which this newspaper uncovered in October 2023. Around 400 people suffered aftereffects, in some cases very serious, due to the extreme harshness of the content they had to remove before it reached the general public. Many of these cases are in court, and others are pending complaints.
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The workers argue that the closure of the office located in the Glòries tower was an illegal measure, intended solely to relocate production to other European countries and “avoid the existing litigation” in the Barcelona center.
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The defendant companies have categorically denied this and assured that the only “real and valid” cause of the redundancy plan was Meta’s decision to terminate the service contract in Barcelona. “There is no economic cause,” stated the lawyer for Telus International, “the cause is organizational and productive.”
Before the judge, the defendant companies (all represented by lawyers from the Baker McKenzie firm) argued that the FIST union lacks legitimacy to challenge the redundancy plan due to insufficient presence among the Glòries tower workforce. The union had no members on the works council nor had it ever run in elections, although its membership surged after the mass dismissal.
The defense lawyers emphasized that the agreement to approve the redundancy plan was negotiated with the works council, controlled by the UGT and CC.OO. unions, and that compensations above the legal minimum as well as relocation plans were offered. The agreement was approved by almost 96% of the workers who voted, with an 80% participation rate, in a process they describe as impeccable.
FIST unsuccessfully tried to revoke the works council and in its lawsuit accuses the company of obstructing the holding of an assembly before the vote.
Sources from the workers explain that even before the collective dismissal, there were more than 1,200 pending claims, both for wage discrimination applied by the company based on the working language and for the dozens of lawsuits and complaints filed for mental health damage caused by content moderation. These litigations consider that rights regarding occupational risk prevention and mental health were violated.
The defendants are the various companies and executives involved in the closure and transfer of the service: Meta Platforms Ireland Inc; Telus International; its CEO, Roger Clancy, who was also CEO of CCC Barcelona; CCC Barcelona Digital Services, SLU; CCC Erste Beteiligungs GMBH and CCC Holding GMBH.
The plaintiffs estimate that the trial could mark a before and after regarding the responsibility of companies that hire people to act as filters for extremely harsh content: terrorism, pedophilia, drug trafficking vendettas, sexual abuse of minors, bullying…
