The Verdi union describes the working conditions of Facebook’s German firefighting team as “precarious”.
Fixed-term contracts, hourly wages below 12 euros, tight performance controls and high psychological stress are the main reasons for this classification. Around 1,000 employees in the Berlin deletion center of the service provider Majorel check posts on Facebook around the clock for violations of Facebook standards.
“Someone has to do this psychologically stressful job, but then at least the working conditions have to be reasonable,” criticized Hauser, the Verdi secretary responsible for operations.
The starting salaries at Majorel amount to 24,000 to 25,000 euros per year, the employment contracts are usually limited to just one year and are then extended twice by half a year. With this position it is even difficult for the employees to find an apartment, as the current rental situation makes it difficult to meet the landlord's requirements and expectations under these conditions.
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Among the employees there are many academics whose degrees are not recognized in Germany. “Facebook and Majorel are taking advantage of this.” Employees are also often unexpectedly presented with a fait accompli, for example tasks are stopped or handed over to other service providers. At the end of November, eight to ten Italian-speaking employees lost their jobs as a result of such an approach because the moderation of Italian content was relocated from Berlin.
Majorel said that “socially acceptable solutions were found in coordination with the employee representatives” for the affected employees.
A spokeswoman for Majorel goes on to say: “We offer an attractive salary package in the area of content moderation that is well above the industry average and the minimum wage.” Majorel has not commented on the terms of the employment contracts.
Fixed-term employment contracts at 11.20 euros per hour
Facebook's second large deletion center is located in Essen and is operated by the service provider CCC. Conditions here are similar to those at Majorel. As a new employee, you can expect to earn 11.20 euros per hour, an ex-employee told heise online. Employment here is almost exclusively temporary. You can “look forward” to a whopping 20 days of vacation a year.
Upon request, CCC confirmed the mentioned starting salary of 11.20 euros per hour. CCC emphasizes that there are “extensive allowances such as weekend, public holiday and night shift allowances”. This means that the minimum and industry-standard wages are “significantly” exceeded.
Monitoring every single second?
There is high pressure at work due to constant monitoring. Specially developed software allows team leaders to always be informed about the activities of their employees. There are different statuses in which the employees are, such as “in production”, which means that they are at work. Breaks or training times are also shown. If an employee does not move their mouse or type anything on the keyboard for eight or nine minutes, they will be shown the status “unavailable”. The number of moderation decisions is also continuously tracked, and samples are also taken to determine the error rate. This information is confirmed by a second ex-employee.
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Employers are allowed to monitor the performance of their employees to a certain extent, but there must not be total monitoring. However, there are “some indications of this” with the system, said a spokesman for the Berlin Commissioner for Data Protection. CCC itself did not comment on these control procedures.
Upon request, Facebook confirmed that the pay was significantly above the industry average and minimum wage. There are no requirements for the number of contributions to be checked in a certain period of time.
“The well-being of all employees and the quality of their work is an important issue for us that we are continually working on,” said a spokesman.
Related to the topic: Facebook: 80% of deleted hate speech was detected by software
Source: heise.de
Article image: Shutterstock / By Aaron-Schwartz
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