Court hears challenge to mass dismissal of more than 2,000 Meta content moderators in Barcelona

A total of 2,062 employees lost their jobs in 2025 after Meta ended its contract with Canadian technology company Telus International, which operated the Barcelona service through CCC Barcelona Digital Services. ALSO READ: Facebook owner Meta closes content moderation centre in Barcelona.

The redundancies were agreed with the main unions represented on the works council. However, the minority FIST union (Força Independent i Sindical de Treballadors) is challenging the collective dismissal and has asked the court to declare it null and void.

At the heart of the dispute is whether the redundancies were a legitimate consequence of Meta terminating its Barcelona contract, as the companies maintain, or whether the operation was effectively transferred elsewhere in Europe in a move that the union claims was designed to eliminate the Barcelona workforce while numerous employment lawsuits were still pending.

More than 1,200 legal claims

According to the lawsuit, more than 1,200 claims had already been brought by employees before the collective dismissal, including cases alleging wage discrimination and others concerning the psychological effects of their work.

Content moderators were required to repeatedly review disturbing and violent material posted on Meta’s platforms, and some workers subsequently pursued personal injury and occupational health claims relating to the mental health impact of the job.

Other cases concerned differences in pay according to the language being moderated. The union alleges that employees working with southern European languages were paid less than colleagues handling northern European languages, resulting in claims of discrimination based on language and origin.

FIST argues that the subsequent redundancies amounted to an ‘attack and a retaliation against the workers’ exercising of their basic rights’.

The union also disputes the economic justification given for the redundancies. It claims that equivalent activities continued elsewhere within Telus’s European operations and that services previously carried out in Barcelona were transferred to countries including Austria, Germany and Slovakia.

On that basis, the lawsuit argues that the restructuring was not prompted by a genuine disappearance of the work but instead involved moving the activity elsewhere while dispensing with the Barcelona workforce.

Meta rejects responsibility for the dismissals

Meta and Telus reject those allegations.

Their lawyers told the court that the dismissals followed Meta’s decision to terminate the commercial contract under which the Barcelona employees had been providing moderation services. They also pointed to the agreement subsequently reached with the workers’ representatives over the collective redundancy process.

Meta additionally disputes the attempt to establish a broader corporate relationship between itself and the contractor.

‘The relationship between Meta and CCC is purely commercial,’ Paula Talavera, representing the US technology group’s Irish subsidiary, told the court, rejecting the union’s argument that the companies effectively formed a corporate network.

The union, however, maintains that Meta cannot simply be separated from a decision that resulted in the loss of practically the entire Barcelona workforce providing moderation services for its platforms.

The case therefore raises a wider question about the extent of a multinational company’s responsibility for workers formally employed by contractors when decisions made by the multinational determine whether those services continue, close or are transferred internationally.

Moderating Meta content since 2018

Telus had provided content-moderation services for Meta in Barcelona since 2018, with employees reviewing material in languages including Spanish, Catalan, French, Dutch, Hebrew and Portuguese.

The dispute now centres on whether the closure and collective dismissal were legally justified business decisions following the loss of the Meta contract, or whether the international structure of the companies involved was used to move the work while frustrating employees’ attempts to pursue their existing legal rights in Spain.

If the court accepts the union’s case and declares the collective dismissal null and void, the affected employees could be entitled to reinstatement.

FIST estimates that the potential economic consequences of such an outcome could exceed €90 million, although any eventual amount would depend on the court’s ruling and subsequent calculations.

The court has not indicated when it will announce its decision.