The TSJC judges the mass layoffs in the content moderator companies of Meta in Barcelona

BarcelonaThe High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) held this Tuesday the oral hearing of the trial against the companies subcontracted by the technology multinational Meta to moderate Facebook or Instagram content from Barcelona. The union FISt (Independent and Trade Union Force of Workers) challenged the collective dismissal that in April 2025 affected more than 2,000 workers at the Barcelona workplace linked for years to Telus and CCC Barcelona and to the services provided for Meta. The defendant companies claim that Meta decided to terminate the contracts with them and the layoffs were agreed upon with the works council.

The proceedings include as defendants both the companies linked to Telus and CCC Barcelona and Meta itself, as well as the unions UGT and CCOO, which were on the works council and agreed to the terms of the collective redundancy plan (ERO). The lawsuit maintains that Meta cannot remain on the sidelines of a decision that, as alleged, affected practically the entire workforce that provided these services in Barcelona: 2,062 out of 2,114 workers.

A measure to shift production?

The central issue is to determine whether the collective dismissal was supported by a legal cause or if, as the plaintiff maintains, it constituted an illegal measure intended to shift production to other European countries. The lawsuit attributes to the companies the decision to close the so-called Barcelona office and relocate equivalent services to Austria, Germany, and Slovakia, through the transnational structure of Telus. According to the plaintiff, this reorganization would not respond to a real extintive cause, but rather to a strategy to get rid of the workforce and avoid the existing litigation in the Spanish state.

The plaintiff maintains that, before the collective dismissal, there were more than 1,200 pending claims related, among other matters, to wage discrimination based on the working language, since the languages of southern Europe were paid less than those of the north, or personal damages derived from deficiencies in matters of occupational risk prevention and mental health. Currently, about 50 lawsuits remain active. Thus, the plaintiffs' lawyer, Enrique Leiva, says that Meta did not want to assume the cost of paying workers more if they lost the lawsuits, nor the reputational damage.