San Francisco, Aug 24 : As Meta (formerly Facebook) begins to gradually reduce the number of employees it employs, hundreds of contract workers staged protests outside the headquarters of the company in the US and demanded fair, honest contract terms for the Mark Zuckerberg-led firm.More than 100 workers of different unions marched through the Meta campus in protest of layoffs of contract employees, according to Almanac News.
“The demonstration brought cafeteria workers together and janitors, shuttle drivers and others to defend the rights of workers as essential in an environment post-pandemic,” the report mentioned.
In the protest at the university last week, which was largely ignored, workers wanted fair contracts from Meta and its subcontractor, Canon Business.
The claimed Canon Business had pushed back against unions representing workers.
“Over the past few years and let’s not forget about this for a long time technology has been flourishing thanks to the support of every one of us.” Maria Noel Fernandez director of campaigning of Silicon Valley Rising, was quoted as saying.
In the midst of a time when Big Tech companies lay off employees and freeze new hires, Meta Founder and CEO Zuckerberg has stated that the company’s goal is to decrease headcount growth over the next 12 months.
The social network’s founder admitted that it is in the midst of a downturn in its economy which will have a large impact on the business of digital advertising, Zuckerberg said that many “teams will be shrinking in order to transfer the focus of our efforts to other areas within the organization”.
“I would like to give our leaders the power to determine within their teams when to increase their efforts in order to fill in attrition, and how to restructure teams, while minimizing the risk to long-term projects,” he during the company’s most recent quarterly earnings conference.
South Bay Labor Council Executive Officer Jean Cohen said that what Facebook can do for the least is “make sure that people get to the table to negotiate with fairness, and to ensure that everyone gets given a fair chance to be treated with respect and dignity, and is able to speak their part in the process”.
A Meta spokesperson stated that it fully recognizes the rights of employees to organize and encourage vendors to work together.
“Many of our vendors’ employees are represented by organized labor.We’re pleased to have worked with vendors to provide and maintain thousands of high-paying, union-based jobs with top-of-the-line salary packages and will continue doing this,” the company spokesperson added.
Facebook reported a one per percent drop in profits at $28.8 billion in the June quarter (Q2).Overall, Meta’s profit dropped 36 percent to $6.7 billion in the first quarter.
A number of Big Tech firms like Microsoft, Google, Snap, Twitter, Spotify and others have either cut their workforce or cut back on hiring for the remainder of the year.
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