African workers in the top tech companies pledge to unionise despite challenges

The parent companies of Facebook, TikTok and ChatGPT, Meta, ByteDance and OPenAI are soon expected to sit at the (re)negotiation table with workers responsible for content creation on their respective online platforms. To date, content creators receive less that 2USD per day and are often subjected to viewing content with lasting negative effects, including post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The vote to register the Content Moderators Union was proclaimed yesterday, Labour Day, at a Nairobi hotel, where present were current and former workers of the aforementioned companies. The news was met with great jubilation. Present also was former Sama worker, Daniel Motaung, who was fired from the Facebook subsidiary for attempting to start a union.

The Motaung case and the Ethiopia hate speech case, which holds Meta responsible for unrest in the country owing to content Facebook allowed to linger on its platform, are now before the Kenyan courts, despite the company claiming jurisdiction limitation. The two cases are seminal to the growing support received by the movement to unionise.