{"id":645136,"date":"2026-08-19T08:49:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T08:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/645136\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T08:49:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T08:49:17","slug":"tiktok-offering-redundancy-agreements-amid-plans-to-cut-about-300-jobs-at-dublin-office-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/645136\/","title":{"rendered":"TikTok offering redundancy agreements amid plans to cut about 300 jobs at Dublin office \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

About 300 jobs look set to be cut at TikTok<\/a>\u2019s Dublin office, with the video-sharing giant offering termination agreements to employees affected by its restructuring plans. <\/p>\n

Last month, 667 jobs at the platform\u2019s Grand Canal Dock office were placed at risk under a proposed restructuring plan<\/a>. Under the plan, the company \u2212 controlled by China-based ByteDance<\/a> company \u2212 intends to create 321 new roles, with opportunities provided to affected employees to apply for those jobs.<\/p>\n

Following a consultation process with employees, the company last week offered a finalised mutual termination agreement to some affected workers. It is expected that employees who sign off on the agreement will finish work at TikTok at the end of the month. <\/p>\n

Among the various clauses in the agreement, one condition requires employees not to make requests or complaints under data protection legislation regarding the company\u2019s processing of their personal data. <\/p>\n

The agreement also requires employees not to pursue any type of complaint, proceedings or claim against the company.<\/p>\n

The agreement includes a lump-sum payout, calculated at one month\u2019s pay per year of service, plus an extra month\u2019s pay.<\/p>\n

The majority of the affected roles are within the company\u2019s trust and safety division. Also at risk are roles in the company\u2019s artificial intelligence<\/a> data service and operations team, responsible for annotation and search operations services. <\/p>\n

In internal TikTok correspondence, seen by The Irish Times, the company said it was proposing the job cuts in Dublin as part of efforts to increase efficiency and align with the company\u2019s global priorities.<\/p>\n

Under the plan, work undertaken by the affected employees in Dublin will be redistributed to TikTok operations in other countries, outsourced to vendor companies and handled by artificial intelligence-enabled or \u201cautomated\u201d solutions, among other measures. <\/b><\/p>\n

Some of the workload will be incorporated into the responsibilities of newly created Dublin-based roles, it is proposed. <\/p>\n

Certain types of current Dublin-based roles will be eliminated completely under the proposed restructuring, it is stated in internal correspondence.<\/p>\n

Employees affected by the lay-off process who spoke to The Irish Times expressed concerns over the fairness of the company\u2019s internal processes for redeployment and retention and about the general downturn in the tech sector\u2019s jobs market<\/a> in Dublin. <\/p>\n

At the time of publication, TikTok had not responded to a request for comment. <\/p>\n

One TikTok employee said the process for retention and redeployment of staff \u2013 including to newly created roles under the restructuring plan \u2013 was \u201clargely considered unfair\u201d by the affected workers. As part of the process, some of the employees were tested on company policies not relevant to their day-to-day work, he said. <\/p>\n

He described the TikTok\u2019s approach to the collective redundancy consultation process as a \u201cbox-ticking exercise\u201d, with little room for concessions. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey know exactly where their legal boundaries are and are careful to stay within them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe workload [for affected jobs in Dublin] has decreased, and [the company] don\u2019t anticipate it getting any higher,\u201d the worker said, speaking to the company\u2019s rationale for the job cuts. <\/p>\n

He noted a marked increase in the use of AI at the company, but said he believed this was not the \u201cprimary driving factor\u201d for the restructuring proposals. <\/p>\n

John Bohan, an organiser with the Communications Workers\u2019 Union<\/a>, which represents some of the affected TikTok staffers, said current legislation around collective redundancies was \u201dfailing workers”. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe redundancy process in TikTok hammers home the need for union recognition and collective bargaining in big tech. Our members found themselves stalled and blocked by the company. They found so-called mitigations [of redundancies] \u2013 including new roles \u2013 to be little more than box-ticking exercises,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

TikTok is a \u201cfast-paced\u201d environment, with workers expected to adapt quickly to new company policies, another affected employee said. There exists a baseline level of stress among some employees, he also said. \u201cThere is always this sense of instability [among staff],\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In light of this work environment, the worker described how many had opted to take the offered severance package. <\/p>\n

Another staffer noted how a changing jobs market within the tech sector compounded difficulties caused by redundancies at TikTok.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Ireland\u2019s tech workers are learning the hard way about the risks of our economic modelOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

TikTok is not alone in its efforts to reduce its workforce. In a reflection of global trends, several tech giants based in Ireland \u2013 including Meta<\/a>, Amazon<\/a> and Microsoft<\/a> \u2013 have this year announced job cuts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWork in this industry now doesn\u2019t mean that you\u2019re safe; you don\u2019t have stability any more,\u201d said one employee affected by the job cuts. \u201cI guess this is the new reality of tech: you have a job, you never know if you\u2019re going to have your job tomorrow or not.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see people, colleagues who are very affected [by the TikTok redundancies]. Their mental health\u2019s not the best. Especially now, because the market to find a new job is not so easy in Dublin compared to how it was a couple of years ago,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

TikTok opened its Dublin base in June 2020 with 20 staff. It expanded rapidly, at one stage increasing its headcount to about 3,000. <\/p>\n

Subsequent rounds of lay-offs have reduced that number significantly. In 2024, the company scrapped plans to occupy a second Dublin office building. Separately, TikTok announced that its first data centre in Europe would be located here, to house European user data, as part of the company\u2019s move to assuage data protection concerns.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0TikTok \u2018monitoring\u2019 M9 crash content and defends record on removing harmful postsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"About 300 jobs look set to be cut at TikTok\u2019s Dublin office, with the video-sharing giant offering termination…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[73],"tags":[1463,289,79,8473,49464,52,18,19,17,1722,305,133516,1150],"class_list":["post-645136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-amazon","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-business","tag-bytedance","tag-communications-workers-union-cwu","tag-dublin","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-meta","tag-microsoft","tag-tech-lay-offs","tag-tiktok"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117121316678285244","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645136","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=645136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}