Workers at Tik Tok’s London Farringdon offices and their union, the Communication Workers Union United Tech and Allied Workers (CWU UTAW) branch, said that TikTok’s recently announced redundancies are an act of “union-busting” that will put “millions of British users at risk”. TikTok, and its parent company ByteDance, announced big job losses on 22 August with a significant reduction in the platform’s vital moderation teams.
Hundreds of moderators and other Trust and Safety workers at the London-based offices have joined the CWU UTAW Branch. Activists and the CWU are engaged in building union membership and organising TikTok workers and to seek union recognition.
Arrangements had been put in place for a voluntary ballot to be held this week on union recognition but, after announcing the redundancies, ByteDance wrote to the CWU saying: “Given these exceptional circumstances, we have decided that it is necessary for us to suspend the planned voluntary ballot process with immediate effect.”
Alongside concerns ranging from workplace stress to a lack of clarity over questions such as pay scales and office attendance policy, workers have also raised concerns over the quality of artificial intelligence (AI) in content moderation, believing such ‘alternatives’ to human work to be too vulnerable and ineffective to maintain TikTok user safety.
Deliberate and cruel timing
Commenting on the redundancies, the CWU National Officer for Tech, John Chadfield, said: “The timing is deliberate, and it is deliberately cruel. It is bare-faced union-busting, leaves the members who have organised facing massive uncertainty and, from what we can see, they are just going to be offshoring these jobs to a third-party in Lisbon.”
“TikTok workers have long been sounding the alarm over the real-world costs of cutting human moderation teams in favour of hastily developed, immature AI alternatives. This has been a constant concern throughout the process of TikTok workers’ efforts to form a union.”
“The unionisation of TikTok is inevitable. They might want to delay it in the most spiteful way possible, but it is inevitable.”
The Berlin strike backlash
As previously reported in Yorkshire Bylines in July this year, Tik Tok workers in Berlin – members of the services, media and tech union ver.di – who took strike action to demand collective agreement and union rights are facing big job losses among Moderation and Trust and Safety staff.
Since the strike action, TikTok’s German management has been busy spreading misinformation within the company about German strike law and announced “one-on-one talks with employees”. ver.di had already denounced this as an attempt at intimidation.
One employee who works outside of the Moderation and Trust and Safety team, but who took strike action, was immediately locked out of all system access. This suspension has since been lifted, but she is to be made redundant.
“Out of a team of more than 30 employees, it is precisely the colleague who took part in the strike who is to be fired. This reeks to high heaven, and we find the alleged business justifications completely unconvincing. We call on TikTok to immediately refrain from the dismissal and finally enter into constructive negotiations with ver.di on the demanded social collective agreement,” says Kathlen Eggerling, the trade union secretary responsible for ver.di’s media sector in Berlin-Brandenburg.
Concerns over AI
Commenting on the developments in London and Berlin, James Bowen, Branch Secretary of the Unite London Digital & Tech Branch, which also organises digi-tech workers in companies such as Google, Microsoft and others, said: “AI is now a massive issue in all sectors of the UK economy. At the recent Unite Conference there were more motions on AI than any other subject. What is happening in Tik Tok in Germany reflects the shape of things to come. The ver.di union is right to demand a collective agreement. Content moderators are required to have knowledge of the country they are in – the language, the social situation, customs and understandings. They have to deal with violent, offensive, fake, racist and pornographic content. They are low paid and have precarious employment. To add insult to injury, the German workers apparently trained the AI systems which will replace them.”
The UK union position with new legislation imminent
UK unions will be watching these developments as the government’s employment bill, due to become law in September, provides for unions to gain access to workers. However, unions will have to request physical and digital access to workplaces in order to organise and communicate with workers and reach agreement with an employer.
In the event of no agreement being reached, a union can take the case to the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC) to enforce these access rights. The CAC will have powers to order employers to enable access and can impose financial penalties for non-compliance. But the money from any financial penalty imposed by the CAC will go to the government – not to the union.
Critics of the bill in its current form say this weakens the incentive for a union to pursue additional legal action. In addition, an employer can appeal to the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) against the CAC’s decision to impose a penalty, effectively leaving workers and unions with rights but no remedy. It remains to be seen if UK unions will be able to grow their membership and secure collective bargaining if employers use these clauses to block union organising.
