TikTok has announced mass layoffs as it looks to replace staff with artificial intelligence. Around 160 of the social media firm’s four hundred employees in Berlin have lost their jobs. Many are up before the Labor Court in the German capital.
Most work in content moderation — at TikTok, a department called “Trust and Safety.” It’s a new field of work, and it’s already set to disappear again through the use of AI and outsourcing. Those who work in the field watch videos and filter out content not suitable for users. The psychological burden is enormous. Sleeping problems are practically an “occupational hazard,” says Sarah Tegge, who works as a content moderator. You can’t do it for long — on average, after three or four years you’re out of the job and can’t take it anymore, she says. Employees like her watch 800 to 1,000 videos a day. But not today — because they’re on strike.
They’re fighting back against being “disposable.” “AI can’t do this job well,” says Tegge. Many are proud of their work because they’re making the internet a safer place. And people are angry — you can feel it in the air. One employee, who wishes to remain anonymous, came to Berlin from abroad and left her family behind. Her case isn’t an exception, says Kathlen Eggerling, the lead negotiator for Ver.di, Germany’s second-largest trade union. The employees come from all over the world. They were assured they would be entering an exciting new field of work — and it sounded like a promising opportunity. What the company didn’t tell them was that they would spend years training an algorithm that was intended to replace them as quickly and cheaply as possible.
The fact that so many employees came from abroad for the job makes the twelve-month notice period they’re fighting for, alongside severance pay worth three years’ salary, particularly important. For many without a German passport, the layoff is threatening in two ways: not only do they lose their job but their residence permit is also at stake.
The TikTok employees want a collective wage agreement — a bargaining committee already exists. But the company refuses to negotiate. At the same time, it’s taking the employees’ representative committee to court. That’s why the strikers appeared before the Labor Court on Tuesday. Ver.di suspects there’s a clear calculation behind this tactic: TikTok wants to push through the layoffs as quickly as possible.
Last year the tech company raked in enormous profits. Officially, the layoffs were part of a “restructuring.” They just tell you “it’s necessary,” says Tegge. But it’s not easy to see what improvements this restructuring is supposed to bring. The events in Berlin prove what many critics have long been saying about technology’s potential to replace human labor: Just because AI cannot master a certain job as well as a human worker, doesn’t mean companies won’t use it anyway.
After all, one of the dazzling promises of AI is that it will gradually free companies from their dependence on humans — who demand wages, get sick, or even go on strike. AI might not have the contextual awareness or empathy necessary to consciously identify material so brutal or disturbing that none of us want to see it. But it is certainly good at reducing labor costs and increasing profits. And that’s exactly what it will be used for.
TikTok is pursuing a two-pronged strategy: Part of the content moderation work will be automated through AI, and what cannot be automated will be outsourced to third-party providers — which is significantly cheaper for the company and also relieves it of responsibilities to employees. TikTok’s plans in Germany follow a tried and tested method whereby tech giants outsource services to countries with lower wages and weaker labor protections. In Kenya, for example, TikTok is already using the subcontractor Teleperformance. The hourly pay there? $2.30.
Firms like Teleperformance are part of an outsourcing industry that tech giants — always looking to lower costs — profit massively from. They tend either to expand to places where labor is cheap, or to recruit from communities who generally have fewer opportunities when it comes to work, like migrant workers for example. This is what makes union organizing so difficult.
The outsourcing industry is growing particularly quickly in the field of content moderation, says Milagros Miceli, a computer scientist and sociologist who studies AI’s impact on labor standards. Subcontractors have long since arrived in Germany as well. The Canadian firm Telus, which now has locations in Leipzig, Essen, and Dortmund, handles content moderation on a large scale for Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
TikTok’s future plans are unclear — including where it intends to outsource the Berlin jobs. The company keeps its cards close to its chest, says Ver.di. Only one thing’s for sure: they’re willing to accept a drop in the quality of their services.
Last year, there was already an overnight wave of layoffs, said one employee. Many felt they could be next. And for the first time they felt how insecure their job was. The best way to protect themselves from the company’s arbitrary decisions was to join a union, the employee said, which is why she joined one, along with many of her colleagues — but a lot of them are still afraid to join the strike. She reports attempts at intimidation by the human resources department as well as emails with misinformation.
I wanted to know from Ver.di’s lead negotiator, Eggerling, whether this whole affair is a kind of test lab. “The industry is watching closely,” she said. How much of a resistance the employees put up and how successful they ultimately are will likely impact more than just the workforce here. And if TikTok succeeds, other firms will copy their strategy.
What’s happening here in Berlin will be a preview of what lies ahead for the whole industry. Companies will not miss the opportunity to use AI’s central promise as a competitive advantage. This means an efficiency without humans, with an algorithm that never gets sick, never strikes, costs less, and also provides the ideal pretext to push down wages, relocate jobs, and undermine labor standards.
But the real pioneers in this struggle are the employees. It’s no exaggeration to say that the strike at TikTok is historic. Though more and more unions are gaining a foothold in the tech industry, there has never been a strike like this at a social media company anywhere in the world. That it happened in Berlin is likely because the workforce here is well organized. Around 70 percent are now members of the union. What has happened in Berlin offers hope. It shows that it’s possible to fight back even against a giant corporation like TikTok. But we only succeed if we fight together.
Great Job Astrid Zimmermann & the Team @ Jacobin Source link for sharing this story.
