Hundreds of Meta contractors employed by Dublin-based Covalen marched on Meta's European headquarters Friday to protest planned layoffs affecting 700 workers, the second cut since November. The workers handle content moderation and data annotation that helps fine-tune Meta's AI products, including checking AI outputs for illicit content and crafting prompts meant to bypass safety guardrails. A large share won't receive any severance because they've been employed for less than two years, while the rest are being offered the local legal minimum of two weeks' pay per year of service. The Communications Workers' Union is asking Covalen to double the severance, pay those under the two-year threshold, and waive the six-month cooldown clause blocking laid-off workers from joining other Meta contractors. Meta said it's reducing reliance on third-party vendors. Meta is separately cutting 10% of its own workforce.
