TikTok workers in Berlin are striking over mass layoffs amid company’s global push to replace moderators with AI
TikTok workers in Germany are holding strikes over mass layoffs of the company’s trust and safety team. The social media behemoth said it is planning to dismantle its entire Berlin moderation team, which removes harmful content from the platform, and outsource the work to artificial intelligence and contract workers. This means the dismissal of 150 employees.
The trade union that represents the TikTok workers, ver.di, has been pushing to negotiate with TikTok over the past few weeks. Kalle Kunkel, a ver.di spokesperson for the Berlin-Brandenburg region, said the union sent a list of demands to TikTok regarding severance for the affected employees and an extension of the layoff notice period to one year. So far, he said, TikTok has refused to come to the table.
“Basically, they said: ‘We don’t want to talk with you,’ so after that, we went on two strikes,” Kunkel said. “But they still don’t react to us.”
The Berlin employees cover the German-speaking market, which the union says has about 32 million active users. TikTok has a handful of offices around the country, but the capital city serves as the biggest hub, with about 400 employees overall. The layoffs of the trust and safety team there would constitute nearly a 40% reduction in force.
