{"id":511901,"date":"2026-05-31T16:29:32","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T16:29:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/511901\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T16:29:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T16:29:32","slug":"were-just-getting-the-crumbs-here-contractors-protest-layoffs-at-metas-european-headquarters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/511901\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We\u2019re Just Getting the Crumbs Here\u2019: Contractors Protest Layoffs at Meta\u2019s European Headquarters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe trained the bots. We did the grind. Now we\u2019re being left behind,\u201d chanted a horde of contract workers who gathered outside Meta\u2019s offices in Dublin, Ireland, on Friday afternoon. Waving flags, brandishing signs, and armed with whistles and vuvuzelas, they were out to protest a round of planned layoffs.<\/p>\n

The workers are employed by Dublin-based company Covalen, which handles content moderation<\/a> and data labeling services that help Meta to fine-tune its AI products. In April, Covalen told 700 employees that their jobs were at risk, citing \u201creduced demand,\u201d WIRED reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A large swath of the affected workers won\u2019t receive any severance because they\u2019ve been employed for less than two years. The rest are being offered the minimum payout required under local labor laws\u2014two weeks\u2019 pay for every year of employment\u2014according to the Communications Workers\u2019 Union (CWU), whose members include Covalen employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just getting the crumbs here,\u201d Aadel Obaid, a team manager at Covalen who is part of the planned layoffs, tells WIRED. \u201cGive us a little bit of the pie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

Photograph: Joel Khalili<\/p>\n

To try to compel Covalen into revising the severance package, workers voted to strike outside the company\u2019s corporate office, before marching to Meta\u2019s nearby European headquarters. According to John Bohan, an organizer at the CWU, Meta could use its leverage as an anchor client to pressure Covalen into offering its employees an enhanced severance package. The workers are asking for double what\u2019s currently being offered\u2014and at least some form of payment for workers who don\u2019t meet the two-year threshold.<\/p>\n

The company could also release Covalen workers from a \u201ccooldown period\u201d preventing them from working on another Meta account for six months after being laid off, Bohan says. (Meta previously described the cooldown period to WIRED as an industry standard.)<\/p>\n

At 1 pm local time on Friday, the striking workers began to gather outside Covalen\u2019s corporate headquarters, a red-brick office building on an otherwise largely residential street in the heart of Dublin. The protests began with a wall of sound: The workers beat drums, booed, whistled, shouted, and catcalled. Then came a volley of call-and-response chants led by a worker with a megaphone. The building’s security guard watched, bemused, from inside the lobby, hands on his hips.<\/p>\n

Two hours later, the group\u2014now more than 150 people\u2014began to march down the center of the mile-long stretch of road to Meta\u2019s campus, slowing the trailing traffic to a crawl. Dubliners enjoying the early onset of summer stopped to gawp; some applauded. When the protesters arrived at Meta\u2019s complex, two security guards stood with crossed arms, blocking the way. The group set up at the gates and began another round of chants: \u201cWe scrub the feed. We take the pain. Meta profits from our strain.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe trained the bots. We did the grind. Now we\u2019re being left behind,\u201d chanted a horde of contract…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,18,19,17,6045,1722,31162],"class_list":["post-511901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-labor","tag-meta","tag-protests"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116670141311206792","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}