The plaintiffs allege that a surveillance program deployed earlier this year shared artificial intelligence data with selected employees for layoffs.
SAN FRANCISCO (CN) – A group of current and former Meta employees sued the company Monday after the social media giant reduced its workforce by 10% using an artificial intelligence model to select specific workers.
The 26 unnamed plaintiffs filed the lawsuit in federal court for the Northern District of California, alleging that Meta began notifying employees of a “mass reduction in force” on May 20 and used an AI system to specifically target workers who had taken or requested protective leave.
“Meta did not compile the termination list based on the considered judgment of managers who were familiar with the work,” the plaintiffs wrote in their 71-page lawsuit. “Instead, Meta utilized a constellation of internal artificial intelligence systems – including a system referred to internally as “Metamate,” employee-trained “second brain agents,” keystroke and activity monitoring data, AI token usage dashboards, and algorithmically-assisted performance assessment and calibration – to evaluate, rank, and select employees for listing.”
Because the AI used performance ratings, productivity and other performance metrics, plaintiffs would say the system inherently excludes employees who have taken time off from work and don’t have as many metrics to compare with other employees.
“The result was that employees who used protected leave were disproportionately selected for termination based on an evaluation that not only failed to take their protected leave into account, but effectively penalized employees for exercising their legal right to that leave,” the plaintiffs write.
The plaintiffs work in various roles at Meta throughout the United States, including in California, Florida, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania and Washington state. They say they have one thing in common: all have taken, applied for or been approved for protective leave within the last 24 months.
Because Meta requires employees to sign a mutual arbitration agreement with a class action waiver, plaintiffs seek to assert their claims individually through arbitration. They are asking the court for an injunction to end their layoffs and restore their employment status as of May 20. Their claims include violations of federal leave laws, the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
In April, Meta announced plans to lay off about 8,000 employees, about 10% of its workforce, while “several thousand additional employees would be reassigned to new artificial intelligence initiatives as Meta sought to transform itself into an ‘AI-first’ company,” the plaintiffs say.
Earlier this year, Meta developed a monitoring program that collected keystrokes, screen content, mouse activity, browsing history, messages, email, and voice, video and location data on company-issued devices.
“The data collected through the employee tracking program was used to build AI tools, including by a new engineering organization to which employees were assigned on a non-voluntary basis,” the plaintiffs write.
The plaintiffs say Meta’s use of the monitoring program was “announced through a low-visibility internal post – written by an engineer rather than a senior manager, in a secondary group and not in Meta’s official employee notification channel – without advance notice and without consent or click-through confirmation; at least on some teams, employees received no consent or confirmation prompt at all, and, at least initially, there was no way to opt out.”
US District Judge William Orrick, appointed by Barack Obama, is assigned to the case.
In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said: “These claims are unfounded and not based on facts. Human resource management and organizational decisions were and are made by humans, not AI.”
Attorneys representing the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Table of Contents
Subscribe to our free newsletter
Our weekly newsletter Closing arguments provides the latest on ongoing trials, major litigation and verdicts in courthouses across the United States and around the world Under the lights clears up the legal mess from Hollywood, sports, big tech and art.
https://www.courthousenews.com/meta-employees-sue-over-use-of-ai-in-workforce-reduction/
