Gig Economy: Gruelling labour of the 21st century

Artificial intelligence (AI) or subcontractors are set to replace them: social media company TikTok plans to fire 150 employees at its Berlin site. At the end of July, they went on strike twice to protest this decision. With the support of the Verdi service union, they want to negotiate a collective agreement. They are demanding severance payments amounting to three years' salary and an extension of the notice period by twelve months. The company has so far refused to do so. “It is disrespectful of TikTok to shirk all social responsibility and refuse to negotiate with us,” said Lucas Krentel of Ver.di.

Most of the 150 employees work as so-called content moderators in the “Trust and Safety” department, which is to be completely dissolved. In their work, they have to watch hundreds of disturbing and violent videos every day to remove them from the platform – from recordings of Islamist beheadings to suicide videos to criminal pornographic content.

The company wants to use AI to reduce personnel costs. However, according to Ver.di, the algorithms are often unable to correctly assess complex content.

The company’s aim is to reduce personnel costs. However, according to Verdi, the algorithms are unable to correctly assess complex content. For example, they repeatedly classified queer content as “hate speech” or deleted posts containing the Arabic word “shahid” across the board – it means martyr and is often used by Islamists, but depending on the context, it can also simply refer to people who have died in war. Human moderators bring experience, judgement and contextual knowledge to the table – indispensable for decisions about the digital public sphere, according to Ver.di. The company claims that AI is ever improving and most of the issues will soon be overcome.

For TikTok employees, the planned job cuts are a slap in the face, says Ver.di. The AI that is now supposed to replace them has been trained by their own work. The lay-offs were the first in the industry in Germany. Ver.di succeeded in organising TikTok employees in a short period of time. A works council was established as early as 2022, and according to Verdi, around 70 per cent of employees are now union members.

It is not yet clear to which subcontractors their work will be outsourced. Trade union circles say that German-speaking jobs will go to companies such as the Canadian group Telus, which has a branch in Leipzig. Others could also be relocated to Ireland, Türkiye, or African countries. The company denies that outsourcing to other countries will take place.

High psychological stress

Social media platforms need content moderators to comply with legal requirements, such as the European Union's digital regulations. These regulations set out obligations for online services regarding consumer protection, transparency, and the handling of illegal content.

Working conditions in the industry are mostly miserable, and the work itself is extremely stressful. Employees often only have temporary contracts and are under considerable time pressure. Bonus payments create incentives to work through the stressful clips non-stop and at an increased speed. Trade unionists and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) refer to the job as a ‘dangerous job of the 21st century’, mainly because of the psychological strain it causes.

A survey published in June by the international trade union federation UNI found that the work causes depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or suicidal thoughts in many content moderators. The survey questioned 206 moderators worldwide, including in Colombia and the Philippines. Thanks to increased access to broadband internet, it is now easy to outsource digital work, creating a global workforce.

In 2023, the first trade union exclusively for content moderators was founded in Kenya. In the same year, a coalition of various NGOs published a manifesto together with the Ver.di service union. Therein, they called for comprehensive and independent psychological care, the recognition of trade unions and collective bargaining, as well as equal pay and working conditions for all moderators worldwide, “to end digital colonialism,” as it was put.

Criticism of international overexploitation

A global system of subcontractors has developed to take on content moderation for large corporations. They specifically seek regions with weak labour rights and low wages for their locations, but which provide a modern and stable internet infrastructure. They usually do not hire digital workers on a permanent basis, but employ them in precarious conditions as self-employed gig workers. Furthermore, they often require workers to maintain confidentiality about their working conditions.

Joanita Najjuko, an expert on the digital economy from Uganda, criticises this: “The developments at TikTok and the outsourcing to Africa by many corporations show an exploitative trend.” The subcontractors are profiting from upheavals in traditional labour markets and from economic despair in conflict regions such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia.

In countries such as Kenya and South Africa, many women have turned to platform work as independent contractors. They hope for flexible employment so that they can combine it with unpaid care work, explains Najjuko. However, technical monitoring and bonus systems frequently force them to be constantly available. There is no maternity leave or other protective measures. “African workers do invisible and undervalued work, typically under unregulated conditions,” Najjuko emphasises.

Content moderators in Africa earn only a fraction of the wages of their colleagues in the Global North. This allows IT companies to maximise their profits, explains Najjuko. She calls on the governments of the African Union to provide more protection, but also for global labour standards, such as data protection rights and mental health protection guidelines.

The fight for global regulation

To coordinate such demands internationally, the Global Trade Union Alliance of Content Moderators, the first organisation of its kind, was founded in April this year in Kenya's capital Nairobi. “Kenya has become a global hub for global moderation, and we welcome investors in Kenya investing in this sector. But this must not be at the expense of the health of workers in this country,” said Benson Okwaro, General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union of Kenya, at the launch of the alliance. The unions' goal is to enforce living wages and safe working conditions at large corporations such as TikTok and Meta and their subcontractors.

The main focus is on ensuring that large companies can be held accountable for their outsourced value chains. The alliance is calling for a binding convention from the United Nations International Labour Organisation (ILO) and supply chain laws that eliminate loopholes for corporations. “Instead of exploitative outsourcing, we need fair wages, psychosocial support and worker-designed regulation,” Najjuko emphasises, also with a view to the labour dispute in Berlin.

However, rules are currently being dismantled, particularly in the area of corporate due diligence in global supply chains. In Germany, the governing Union parties under Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) are calling for the local supply chain law to be repealed. The law was intended to ensure that German companies could be held liable for human rights violations in their international value chains. The Union parties see this as a competitive disadvantage.

Admittedly, the previous federal government had already announced its intention to abolish the law. It would “fire up the chainsaw and bolt the whole thing away,” as the then Federal Minister for Economic Affairs Robert Habeck (Greens) put it. In their coalition agreement, the SPD and the CDU/CSU agreed to suspend all sanctions for violations of the law, except in cases of ‘massive human rights violations’ – until a corresponding EU directive is transposed into national law. The federal government has until 2026 to do so.

However, the CDU/CSU parties want to see this EU directive abolished as well. Merz emphasised this in May during his inaugural visit to the European Commission. Although the SPD rejects this, a significant watering down of the requirements is likely.

The article was first published in German in the weekly newspaper Jungle World (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre)