- Meta introduced an AI employee-monitoring program earlier this year, designed to capture workers' keystrokes, mouse activity, and other data on company devices.
- Employees on protected leave were selected for layoffs scheduled to begin on July 22, according to a lawsuit filed by 26 plaintiffs.
- Twenty-six employees filed a lawsuit in Oakland federal court, alleging that Meta used AI systems to disproportionately select employees on protected leave for layoffs.
- The lawsuit claims that Meta's AI tools targeted employees who had requested protected or maternity leave or disability accommodations.
- Meta disputes the allegations, stating that the claims lack merit and that workforce management decisions were made by people, not AI.
- The lawsuit alleges that Meta used a constellation of AI systems to score, rank, and select employees for layoffs, which included performance ratings and activity-monitoring data.
- One plaintiff was notified of her layoff just two days before giving birth, while another claimed he received a lower rating due to taking time off for an injury.
- The lawsuit seeks an injunction to preserve each worker's job and an independent audit of the layoff-selection process.
- Meta's internal AI systems reportedly classified employees based on their adoption of AI tools, which may have disadvantaged those on protected leave.
A lawsuit filed in Oakland, California, alleges that Meta Platforms used AI systems to unfairly target employees on protected leave for layoffs. The 26 plaintiffs claim that the company relied on internal AI tools, including performance ratings and activity monitoring, which failed to account for their legal rights to leave.
The complaint states, The result was that employees who took protected leaves were disproportionately selected for layoff, based on scoring that not only failed to account for their protected leaves, but in effect penalized the employees for exercising their legal rights to these leaves. One plaintiff, a scientist, was notified of her layoff just two days before giving birth, while another engineer reported receiving a lowered rating due to time off for an injury.
Meta has denied the allegations, asserting that Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI. The lawsuit, described as the first of its kind against a major U.S. company, seeks an injunction to preserve the jobs of the affected employees and an independent audit of the layoff-selection process.
The plaintiffs argue that Meta's AI systems, which include tools like Metamate, systematically disadvantage those on leave, violating federal and state laws that protect workers from discrimination based on medical or family leave. They are also challenging the lack of bias testing in Meta's AI systems, which they claim violates new laws in California and New York City.
The layoffs, affecting nearly 8,000 employees, are set to begin on July 22, with the plaintiffs seeking to block the process while their claims are pursued in arbitration.
“Twenty-six anonymous employees filed the lawsuit in Oakland federal court, seeking to block Meta's July 22 layoffs pending arbitration. The complaint, reportedly the first to challenge a major US company's AI use for layoffs, alleges systems like 'Metamate' and keystroke monitoring scored workers without accounting for protected leave.”
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