Facebook content moderators in Kenya are receiving a pay rise following a TIME investigation
acebook content moderators based in Kenya will receive a salary increase of between 30% and 50%, in a move announced two weeks after a TIMEdrew attention to low pay, poor working conditions and alleged union-busting by Sama, the outsourcing company that is their direct employer.
In the meeting on Tuesday, Habel Kamau, a human resources director at Sama’s Nairobi office, said that the salary changes were not a result of the TIME article. “The truth is that this conversation was still going to happen with these events occurring or not,” he said. In a statement to TIME, Motaung welcomed the news of the pay rise, but said that it was too low. He noted that in 2019, organizing employees had called for their pay to be doubled. “This increase will make a difference but it won’t change their lives,” Motaung said in the statement. “They still won’t be able to buy a house or feed their families in line with the ‘lifting the poor out of poverty’ narrative that Sama continuously boasts about.
“Our response worries me,” the comment continued, referring to the official statement a Meta spokesperson had provided for the story, which said that the company regularly conducts audits of third-party content moderation providers like Sama. “To me this means either: 1) we didn’t audit this vendor, 2) we audited them, knew this was happening, and we’re OK with it, 3) we audited them but our audit missed this. None of these scenarios sound good and I hope I am missing something.
Employees say they are currently expected to work 40-hour weeks including attending meetings and wellness time, or 45-hour weeks if their daily hour-long breaks are included. TIME has also seen emails sent by Sama managers in 2019 instructing employees to be on duty for the full 45 hours, not including breaks, due to “client [Facebook] demand.
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