‘We’re Just Getting the Crumbs Here’: Contractors Protest Layoffs at Meta’s European Headquarters

“我们只得到了残羹冷炙”：外包员工在 Meta 欧洲总部抗议裁员

“We trained the bots. We did the grind. Now we’re being left behind,” chanted a horde of contract workers who gathered outside Meta’s offices in Dublin, Ireland, on Friday afternoon. Waving flags, brandishing signs, and armed with whistles and vuvuzelas, they were out to protest a round of planned layoffs. “我们训练了机器人，我们付出了艰辛的劳动，现在却被抛弃了。”周五下午，一群聚集在爱尔兰都柏林 Meta 办公室外的外包员工高呼着口号。他们挥舞着旗帜，举着标语，吹着哨子和呜呜祖拉，抗议新一轮的裁员计划。

The workers are employed by Dublin-based company Covalen, which handles content moderation and data labeling services that help Meta to fine-tune its AI products. In April, Covalen told 700 employees that their jobs were at risk, citing “reduced demand,” WIRED reported. 这些员工受雇于总部位于都柏林的 Covalen 公司，该公司负责内容审核和数据标注服务，帮助 Meta 优化其人工智能产品。据《连线》（WIRED）报道，今年 4 月，Covalen 以“需求减少”为由，告知 700 名员工他们的工作面临风险。

A large swath of the affected workers won’t receive any severance because they’ve been employed for less than two years. The rest are being offered the minimum payout required under local labor laws—two weeks’ pay for every year of employment—according to the Communications Workers’ Union (CWU), whose members include Covalen employees. 据包含 Covalen 员工在内的通信工人工会（CWU）称，很大一部分受影响的员工因为入职时间不足两年，将无法获得任何遣散费。其余员工获得的赔偿仅为当地劳动法规定的最低标准——即每工作一年支付两周的工资。

“We’re just getting the crumbs here,” Aadel Obaid, a team manager at Covalen who is part of the planned layoffs, tells WIRED. “Give us a little bit of the pie.” “我们在这里只得到了残羹冷炙，”Covalen 的团队经理、此次裁员计划的受影响者 Aadel Obaid 对《连线》表示，“分给我们一点蛋糕吧。”

To try to compel Covalen into revising the severance package, workers voted to strike outside the company’s corporate office, before marching to Meta’s nearby European headquarters. According to John Bohan, an organizer at the CWU, Meta could use its leverage as an anchor client to pressure Covalen into offering its employees an enhanced severance package. The workers are asking for double what’s currently being offered—and at least some form of payment for workers who don’t meet the two-year threshold. 为了迫使 Covalen 修改遣散方案，工人们投票决定在公司总部外举行罢工，随后游行至附近的 Meta 欧洲总部。据 CWU 的组织者 John Bohan 称，Meta 可以利用其作为核心客户的影响力，向 Covalen 施压，要求其为员工提供更优厚的遣散费。工人们要求将目前的赔偿金额翻倍，并至少为那些未达到两年工龄门槛的员工提供某种形式的补偿。

The company could also release Covalen workers from a “cooldown period” preventing them from working on another Meta account for six months after being laid off, Bohan says. (Meta previously described the cooldown period to WIRED as an industry standard.) Bohan 表示，该公司还可以取消 Covalen 员工的“冷静期”限制，该条款禁止员工在被裁后六个月内从事其他 Meta 相关的业务。（Meta 此前曾向《连线》解释称，该冷静期是行业标准。）

At 1 pm local time on Friday, the striking workers began to gather outside Covalen’s corporate headquarters, a red-brick office building on an otherwise largely residential street in the heart of Dublin. The protests began with a wall of sound: The workers beat drums, booed, whistled, shouted, and catcalled. Then came a volley of call-and-response chants led by a worker with a megaphone. The building’s security guard watched, bemused, from inside the lobby, hands on his hips. 周五当地时间下午 1 点，罢工的工人们开始聚集在 Covalen 公司总部外，这是一栋位于都柏林市中心一条以住宅为主的街道上的红砖办公楼。抗议活动以巨大的声浪开始：工人们敲鼓、嘘声、吹哨、呐喊和起哄。随后，一名工人拿着扩音器领头，开始了此起彼伏的口号呼应。大楼的保安站在大厅内，双手叉腰，困惑地注视着这一切。

Two hours later, the group—now more than 150 people—began to march down the center of the mile-long stretch of road to Meta’s campus, slowing the trailing traffic to a crawl. Dubliners enjoying the early onset of summer stopped to gawp; some applauded. When the protesters arrived at Meta’s complex, two security guards stood with crossed arms, blocking the way. The group set up at the gates and began another round of chants: “We scrub the feed. We take the pain. Meta profits from our strain.” 两小时后，这支队伍（现已超过 150 人）开始沿着一英里长的道路中心向 Meta 园区进发，导致后方交通缓慢如爬行。享受着初夏时光的都柏林市民停下脚步围观，有些人甚至鼓掌支持。当抗议者到达 Meta 园区时，两名保安交叉双臂挡在路口。抗议人群在门口集结，开始了新一轮的口号：“我们清理信息流，我们承受痛苦，Meta 却从我们的辛劳中获利。”

Covalen did not respond immediately to a request for comment. Meta spokesperson Erica Sackin told WIRED the company would be “reducing our reliance on third-party vendors and strengthening our internal systems.” She added that those protesting weren’t Meta employees, and said the staffing decisions were up to Covalen. Covalen 没有立即回应置评请求。Meta 发言人 Erica Sackin 对《连线》表示，公司将“减少对第三方供应商的依赖，并加强内部系统”。她补充说，抗议者并非 Meta 员工，并表示人事决定由 Covalen 自行负责。

The latest round of layoffs marks the second time that Covalen has cut staff since November. Between the two cuts, Covalen’s headcount stands to be slashed by almost half, according to the CWU. The majority of the workers caught up in the latest layoffs are data annotators. Their job involves checking material generated by Meta’s AI models for illicit content, and cooking up prompts meant to bypass safety guardrails. “It’s quite a grueling job,” Nick Bennett, one of the affected employees, previously told WIRED. “There was a stage where we had to spend days on end pretending to be suicidal or a pedophile.” 这是 Covalen 自去年 11 月以来的第二轮裁员。据 CWU 称，在这两轮裁员之后，Covalen 的员工人数将被削减近一半。此次裁员中受影响的大多数是数据标注员。他们的工作包括检查 Meta AI 模型生成的内容是否存在非法信息，并编写旨在绕过安全护栏的提示词。“这是一项非常折磨人的工作，”受影响的员工之一 Nick Bennett 此前告诉《连线》，“有一段时间，我们不得不连续几天假装自己有自杀倾向或恋童癖。”

Meta is currently undergoing sweeping layoffs of its own. In April, the company told employees it would cut its workforce by 10 percent—or 8,000 people. But while Meta employees are reportedly in line to receive four months’ pay, plus two weeks for every year of employment, Covalen staffers are set to receive far less. “These workers exist in a situation where they’re constantly using Meta tools, they’re on Meta platforms,” says Bohan, the CWU organizer. “But they’re denied all the privileges and benefits of Meta staff.” Meta 目前也在进行大规模裁员。今年 4 月，该公司告知员工将裁员 10%，即 8000 人。然而，据报道，Meta 的正式员工将获得四个月的工资，外加每工作一年两周的补偿，而 Covalen 的员工获得的赔偿要少得多。“这些员工处于一种持续使用 Meta 工具、身处 Meta 平台的环境中，”CWU 组织者 Bohan 说，“但他们却被剥夺了 Meta 正式员工的所有特权和福利。”

“It’s infuriating,” says Owen O’Reilly, a content moderator at Covalen whose job isn’t at risk but who participated in the strike to support colleagues. “It makes us feel as if we really have no worth.” “这太令人愤怒了，”Covalen 的内容审核员 Owen O’Reilly 说。虽然他的工作没有受到裁员威胁，但他参加了罢工以支持同事。“这让我们觉得我们真的毫无价值。”

Though Covalen has cycled some of the affected workers into alternative roles since announcing the layoffs, the remainder are due to lose their jobs at the end of June, according to the CWU. 据 CWU 称，尽管 Covalen 在宣布裁员后已将部分受影响员工调配至其他岗位，但其余员工仍将在 6 月底失去工作。

Before Friday’s march, workers had already mounted two days of strikes, picketing outside the Covalen office. At a strike on May 15, one Covalen worker brandished a sign that read, “Zuck the Cuck Loves Watching His Contractors Get F#CK€D.” The union’s members plan to participate in escalating industrial action over the next month. 在周五的游行之前，工人们已经进行了两天的罢工，并在 Covalen 办公室外进行纠察。在 5 月 15 日的罢工中，一名 Covalen 员工举着一块标语，上面写着：“扎克伯格喜欢看着他的外包员工被搞垮。”工会成员计划在下个月采取进一步升级的劳工行动。

One of the striking Covalen workers, Amine Mouhouvi, says he was told he would be laid off a month after emigrating from France to take up a role as a data annotator. Because of the cooldown clause, he is unable to pursue a job with another Meta contractor until the end of the year. “It’s virtually forcing me to be unemployed for six months,” he tells WIRED. “If you’re not going to give us benefits, at least let us work.” 罢工的 Covalen 员工之一 Amine Mouhouvi 说，他从法国移民过来担任数据标注员仅一个月，就被告知将被裁员。由于“冷静期”条款，他在今年年底前无法在 Meta 的其他外包商处寻找工作。“这实际上是强迫我失业六个月，”他告诉《连线》，“如果不给我们福利，至少让我们工作吧。”

The permissiveness of Irish labor laws means the odds are ultimately stacked against the striking workers. Unlike in the US or UK, where employers are required to recognize a union that wins the support of enough employees, there are no such provisions in Ireland. “The big weakness in Ireland is this utter inability even to get the employer to sit down,” says Michael Doherty, a professor of law at Maynooth University who specializes in labor disputes. “It’s pretty much open.” 爱尔兰劳动法的宽松意味着罢工工人最终处于劣势。与美国或英国不同，在这些国家，雇主必须承认获得足够员工支持的工会，而爱尔兰没有此类规定。“爱尔兰最大的弱点在于，甚至无法让雇主坐下来谈判，”梅努斯大学专门研究劳资纠纷的法学教授 Michael Doherty 说，“这几乎是完全开放的（局面）。”