Amid retrenchment by Meta (formerly Facebook), over 100 service workers, from various unions, who were on contract marched on the Meta campus and protested at the company’s headquarters, in the US. They are demanding fair contracts from the Mark Zuckerberg-led company, reports  Almanac News.

At the demonstration Cafeteria workers, janitors, shuttle drivers and others are fighting for the rights of the workers deemed essential in a post-pandemic environment, report mentioned.

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In the last week too, workers had marched on the campus but went largely unnoticed. They demanded fair contracts from Meta and its subcontractor, Canon Business. While, The Canon Business allegedly pushed back the unionizing of the workers.

“Over the last several years, and let’s be true about this, forever, tech has been thriving on the backs of all of us,” Maria Noel Fernandez, campaign director of Silicon Valley Rising, was quoted as saying.

Meta Founder and CEO Zuckerberg admitted the economic downturn in social networks and its impact on the digital advertising business. He unveiled the company’s plan to steadily reduce headcount growth over the next year.

Several Big Tech firms like Microsoft, Google, Snap, Twitter, Spotify and others have either shrunk their workforce or reduced/frozen hiring for the rest of the year.

“Many teams are going to shrink so we can shift energy to other areas inside the company”, said Zuckerberg.

He further added that he wants to give his leaders the ability to decide within their teams where to double down, where to backfill attrition and where to restructure teams while minimizing thrash to the long-term initiatives.

South Bay Labor Council Executive Officer Jean Cohen said that what Facebook can do the least is to “make sure that they come to the table to bargain fairly, to make sure that everybody is treated with respect and dignity and has a voice on the job”.

A Meta spokesperson said that it fully recognises the right of employees to organize and encourage vendors to continue to work collaboratively.

The Company spokesperson added that many of Meta vendors’ employees are represented by organized labor and company is proud that it has partnered with vendors to create and maintain thousands of good-paying, union jobs with industry-leading compensation packages and will continue to do so.

Facebook reported a 1 per cent drop in revenue to $28.8 billion in the June quarter (Q2). Overall, Meta’s profit fell 36 per cent to $6.7 billion in the quarter.