On Friday May 5, 2023 we went to Sama’s offices in Sameer Park along Mombasa Road to ask for our April salaries and present hard copies of the court order that they are disobeying in a peaceful sit-in which they reiterated with calling riot police on us who in the wrong turn of events instead sympathized with us on reading the court order as custodians of the law.
After a long wait, we were asked to come inside for address by delegates of Sama CEO, Wendy Gonzalez who disregarded us as nonentities and also denied us to use the restroom as ordered by Sama administrator Rose Emma to lock up in an office we belong as employees and had called us in for a meeting.
We believe we did great and right by ourselves in the event even after HR manager Habel Kamau came later and read to us their unofficial brief that is unofficial, factually wrong, misleading, insulting and in a purely bullish contempt of court advised by their lawyer who had not even read the served court order.
''Nairobi, Kenya, May 5, 2023- Sama respects the right to peacefully demonstrate. In the interest of safety, other tenants at Sameer Business Park requested property management to engage the police.
Sama is in full compliance with the court order.
The petitioners have twice asked the court to extend their expiring contracts and twice have been declined. The Sama moderation contract with Facebook has expired – the Court Orders did not stop it from expiring and we do not have any content moderation work to give.
The Court declined to grant the order seeking to prevent the expiry of contracts and directed that the individual contracts cannot be varied. As a consequence, the expiry dates of each contract of employment could not be changed and every employee’s employment expired automatically on their respective expiry date.
In compliance with the Court Order, all employees whose contracts have not expired continue to be kept on payroll and are being paid.
All of those who have expired contracts are no longer Sama employees.
As required by the moderators’ lawyers, we are restricted from responding or taking action outside of the court. There is a hearing set for May 11th, 2023 where the content moderators will have an opportunity to raise their concerns.''
In response, our Counsel Mercy Mutemi says, ‘’Facebook outsourcer Sama issues “factually wrong and misleading” statement after setting police on peaceful content moderator sit-in and threatening to tear gas them The statement issued by Sama today in response to a sit-in by content moderators demanding they be paid, as mandated by a court order, is factually wrong and misleading about the powers of the court order granted by Justice Nduma Nderi of the Nairobi court. We would like to direct Sama’s attention to Section C of the court order from the Employment and Labor Relations Court of March 20, 2023. It is made clear in Section C that Facebook is forbidden from terminating the contracts of content moderators. The order reads: “the 1st [Meta], 2nd [Meta Ireland] and 3rd [Sama] Respondents are restrained from terminating the contracts of the Facebook Content Moderators pending the hearing of this application.” Facebook is also forbidden from transferring the work to another provider. Section E of the court order states that Facebook is forbidden from engaging any other party – and specifically outsourcing company Majorel – to provide replacement content moderation services for the ones provided by Sama. The suggestion in Sama’s statement that it is no longer doing content moderation work appears to be evidence that Facebook does not intend to obey that part of the order either. On top of this, Sama responded to today’s peaceful sit-in of moderators at their office with the unnecessary and heavy-handed deployment of a unit of riot police. There is no evidence to support Sama’s assertion that the police were called by others within the building. Not only that, but there was a suggestion from police that they were preparing to use tear gas against us, which was utterly uncalled for. This is nothing more than reprehensible rank intimidation tactics from a so-called “ethical AI” company. Sama should withdraw its statement immediately; apologize for the threat to deploy tear gas and pay the wages they owe us by law.’’ We soldier on!
We pay homage to our Counsel Mercy Mutemi, tech justice giant Foxglove, Siasa place, the media fraternity and the public.
We soldier on!