Facebook parent Meta has abruptly terminated its contract with a Barcelona-based content moderation organisation, leaving 2,000 staff in limbo over their future, according to the employees’ unions, UGT and CCOO, and local media reports.

A manager from Barcelona-based Telus International told staff in an email last Thursday that they were to be sent home, unions said.

The move came after internal communications including email had been suspended without explanation.

Contract suspended

Marta Valero, president of the company’s workers’ committee, told the Catalan News Agency, ACN, that staff hadn’t received any official communication from Telus regarding next steps.

Valero said staff at the landmark Torre Gloriès skyscraper in downtown Barcelona initially thought they were having technical issues when they were unable to access internal systems.

“We are very angry and upset,” she told ACN.

Telus said in a statement that its clients are “diversifying their presence and transferring their services to other locations”.

Vancouver, Canada-based Telus, which operates locally as CCC Barcelona Digital Services, said it would provide support to the affected team members during negotiations with the unions.

The email to staff said a client had warned on 1 April that it would suspend services and that staff would be placed on leave and should not return to work.

The email reportedly did not name the client, but the unions said the client was Meta.

The company said in a statement that it would continue with content moderation and other strategic projects and that the termination wouldn’t affect Telus Digital’s 2025 plans.

The team provided content moderation services in Catalan, Dutch, French, Hebrew, Portuguese and Spanish, a former employee told Reuters.

Moderation plans

Meta said in a statement it had moved the services from Barcelona to other locations and that the company is not reducing its content review efforts.

The company said in January it was removing its fact-checking operations in the US and would no longer proactively scan for violations such as hate speech, but would only respond to user reports.

Last week Kenya’s high court said a landmark $2.4bn lawsuit over content moderation could go ahead against Meta, after the company had argued Kenyan courts did not have jurisdiction.

Meta also faces a lawsuit in Kenya by former content moderators who said they were subjected to poor work conditions, which Meta denies.