Kenyan Court Rules it Can Hear a Case Against Meta Over Sacking of Facebook Moderators

A judge has ruled that Facebook's parent company Meta can be sued in Kenya.

This is after 43 Facebook moderators at its Nairobi hub last month filed a lawsuit against Meta and its local partner Sama for unfair termination.

Judge Matthews Nduma of the Employment and Labor Relations Court on Thursday issued an interim injunction against Meta and Sama barring them from terminating the moderators' contracts until the legality of their redundancy is determined.

"The court finds that this court has jurisdiction to determine the matter of alleged unlawful and unfair termination of employment on grounds of redundancy," Judge Nduma noted.

At the start of the year, Sama, an outsourcing company that was hired by Meta to moderate Facebook content from Nairobi in 2019, informed its 260 content moderators at its Nairobi office that they were being laid off.

The moderators in the petition claim they were fired in retaliation for complaints about poor working conditions and attempts to form a union.

They further say they were blacklisted from applying for the same roles at Majorel, a Luxembourg-based outsourcing company that has since been hired by Meta to moderate Facebook content from Nairobi.

The court heard that most of the moderators who lost their jobs unsuccessfully re-applied to vacant spots at Majorel for what appeared to be the same work, but paying less than Sama did. 

Majorel’s recruiters said they were instructed not to hire any of the moderators who had just been laid off from Sama, the court was told.