IRISH TIKTOK STAFF who were warned that their roles were at risk in the company\u2019s latest restructuring have now been formally offered termination agreements, following a consultation process.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s understood that the total number of people being laid off remains close to what TikTok proposed last month, with around 300 people to be out of a job come the end of this month.<\/p>\n
It is further understood that there has been some extension for visa holders whose immigration status is linked to their employment at the firm.<\/p>\n
Staff who were informed by management that they are at risk of redundancy can accept the termination agreement offer, which gives them additional redundancy pay, or opt not to sign and only receive the statutory minimum.<\/p>\n
The agreements on the table have conditions, including a requirement for employees to agree that they will not make complaints to the Irish Data Protection Commission \u201cor any other supervising authority\u201d about how the company, or any of its group companies, has processed their personal data.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It also requires workers to agree not to make\u00a0data access requests, under GDPR legislation that relate to the termination of their employment.<\/p>\n
Staff being laid off work primarily in the area of trust and safety. TikTok has flagged in its official statements that the decision to reduce headcount has been made in line with its plans to advance \u201cthe latest technological innovations\u201d, in an apparent nod to the role of artificial intelligence in its business operations.<\/p>\n
One staff member who has been offered a termination agreement told The Journal that being laid off after years working at the firm has meant that they had had to pause the process of buying a house, and will have to delay their plans to start a family with their partner.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t do those things from a single-bedroom rented apartment. It\u2019s impacted my life hugely,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
The staff member said that they had not felt \u201csafe\u201d in their job for the last few years as they were aware of TikTok laying off workers in different countries.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe atmosphere in the workforce has soured because of these and other smaller rounds of layoffs,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
At a virtual meeting\u00a0at the time layoffs were first announced, staff were told that the workforce was being \u201creorganised\u201d to scale up the teams\u2019 capabilities to support \u201crapid business growth in the GenAI space\u201d.<\/p>\n
TikTok has said that its restructuring will lead to hundreds of new \u201cspecialist roles\u201d in Dublin eventually.<\/p>\n
Employees have also been told that TikTok, which employs over 2,000 people in Ireland, is ending a policy allowing staff to work from abroad.<\/p>\n
The policy allowed staff to work from any country that they were legally able to for 20 days per year (meaning that EU citizens could work from anywhere in Europe, for example).<\/p>\n
A staff member The Journal spoke with said this policy was hugely popular and that its withdrawal will affect a lot of workers from other countries who came to Ireland to work for the company.<\/p>\n
TikTok informed employees that in cases where visa renewals, conflicts or crises in the location they are working from, or family emergencies arise, other arrangements will be put in place, including the use of annual leave or family care leave for those in the latter category.<\/p>\n
John Bohan, an organiser at the Communications Workers\u2019 Union which is representing some of the employees being made redundant, said that since layoffs were first announced workers had organised to fight for better redundancy terms.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s no small feat to stand up to one of the largest digital platforms on the planet,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bohan said that by doing so they have won \u201csmall gains\u201d including timeline extensions for migrant workers, and offers of garden leave in place of payment in lieu of notice.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He added that when it comes to the planned rollback of work from abroad benefits, and attempts to restrict laid off workers from data access rights, union members are \u201cmore committed than ever\u201d to creating \u201clarge scale positive change in TikTok\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"IRISH TIKTOK STAFF who were warned that their roles were at risk in the company\u2019s latest restructuring have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[73],"tags":[289,79,52,18,19,17,3582,29966,1150],"class_list":["post-634003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-business","tag-dublin","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-layoffs","tag-tech-industry","tag-tiktok"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117085093543513011","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634003","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=634003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}