WORKERS WILL PROTEST outside the offices of tech giant Meta and outsourcing tech firm Covalen on Friday over the news Meta is to lay off up to 350 staff within its Irish workforce.
The Irish job cuts come as Meta aims to cut 8,000 roles globally this year as company bosses have said that AI is set to transform how the multinational works, which equates to roughly 10% of its workforce.
Earlier this month Covalen announced that the jobs of 720 workers on Meta projects are at risk of redundancy. Dublin based Covalen is owned by CPL Resources, a multinational firm that provides AI annotation and moderation services to Meta.
The Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) is organising Friday’s protest, which will take place at Meta’s Dublin HQ and Covalen’s Haddington Road office.
The union says AI-driven restructuring is “hollowing out the tech sector from top to bottom” and is calling for “just transition” supports for workers facing AI-related job losses.
CWU head of organising Fionnuala Ní Bhrógáin said: “These workers carried out essential work for Meta every single day. Yet when their jobs are threatened and disappear, they are treated as somebody else’s problem.”
“Outsourced workers cannot continue to act as the shock absorbers for the AI transition while multinational corporations protect their profits and the Government looks the other way.”
The CWU is calling for “urgent government engagement” and a review of Ireland’s collective redundancy framework.
CWU general secretary Seán McDonagh said: “Ireland has built an economic model heavily dependent on multinational tech companies and outsourced labour structures. But when restructuring comes, workers are finding they have remarkably few protections – from their employers or from the Government. Yet by uniting, they create a powerful and meaningful voice.”
“The Government cannot continue to celebrate tech and AI investment on the one hand while ignoring its human consequences on the other.”