Yorkshire Bylines reported on TikTok’s union-busting activities last year. Now TikTok’s decision to sack more than 400 workers at its London offices at Christmas has involved the United Tech & Allied Workers (UTAW), a branch of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), in mounting legal action on behalf of three workers who were employed as moderators. The three workers are bringing cases of unlawful dismissal for engaging in trade union activities.
The CWU says TikTok announced the redundancies seven days before workers at the platform’s London offices were due to vote on union recognition. The ballot was of around 400 of TikTok’s moderators and quality assurance staff from the trust and safety team. The job of these teams is to handle postings on the platform to ensure compliance with TikTok’s rules including checking that no extreme, pornographic or violent content is being posted.
TikTok, in a blatant act of union busting, announced a restructuring exercise that placed the workers in the proposed bargaining unit ‘at risk of redundancy’. Once the redundancies were announced in August 2025, the CWU suspended the ballot. The workers were made redundant just before Christmas.
The CWU and the sacked workers accuse the TikTok of ‘oppressive and intimidating’ union busting, arguments that TikTok say were ‘coincidental and baseless’. The company argues that the redundancies were part of a wider global reorganisation of the platform to incorporate “the benefit of technological advancements to continue maximising safety” for its users. TikTok argues that 91% of transgressive content is now removed automatically by AI.
Moderators of extreme content lacked support
One of those workers taking legal action against TikTok is Lynda Ouazar who says: “There was an environment of bullying, harassment and union busting at TikTok.”
Lynda started at the company as a moderator and then worked in quality control, checking the work of external agency moderators. At first, she found her job was rewarding, but later she moved on to dealing with some of the most extreme content posted on the platform.
“You don’t want to see children being sexually assaulted, you don’t want to see women going through all kinds of abuse, you don’t want to see people self-harming,” she told Sky News.
Lynda says there was little support to keep moderators safe, or to ensure they were able to moderate content effectively.
“Moderators find themselves pressurised to deliver, so they have to carry on, even if you see something which really affects you and you feel like you have tears in your eyes,” Lynda told Sky News.
John Chadfield, CWU national officer for tech workers said of the legal action: “This is holding TikTok to account for union busting. Content moderators have the most dangerous job on the internet. They are exposed to the child sex abuse material, executions, war and drug use. Their job is to make sure this content doesn’t reach TikTok’s 30 million monthly users. It is high pressure and low paid. They wanted input into their workflows and more say over how they kept the platform safe. They said they were being asked to do too much with too few resources.”
At the Labour Party Conference last September in Liverpool, the CWU held a demonstration attended by TikTok workers which highlighted the company’s union busting as well as the baffling and tin-eared decision to allow TikTok to sponsor a Labour Students social event.
In 2022 TikTok were forced to establish a works council under German law. Nine of the 11 members of the works council are also members of the service workers union ver.di. Last year, Tik Tok workers in Berlin began a series of stoppages and legal actions against TikTok demanding full union recognition for TikTok moderators. That dispute appears to be ongoing.
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