The company that moderates content for Facebook and Instagram in Barcelona, ??Telus / CCC Barcelona Digital Services, has been convicted of moral damages for paying workers less depending on the language in which they had to moderate the content. Those in group A, who screened content in French, Hebrew, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Dutch, could charge up to 9,088 euros more each year compared to those in group B, which included those in Spanish, Catalan, Italian and Portuguese. .
A ruling from the Social Court No. 31 of Barcelona – which is appealable – condemns Telus to pay 10,001 euros to each of the 19 workers who reported discrimination. The resolution ignores his request to receive the difference not collected in his years of work in the Glòries tower in Barcelona, ??where Telus settled in 2018.
In October, a series of reports by La Vanguardia denounced the epidemic of mental illness that affected the company’s workers due to the atrocities they saw. Many of them have open proceedings against Telus, both socially and criminally.
The ruling “represents a precedent for the entire contact center sector in Barcelona, ??in which the practice of discrimination based on language is widespread,” estimates the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Enrique Leiva, from the Abógalo group.
The judge compared – with data from the Institute of Statistics of Catalonia – the number of residents of each nationality in Barcelona and the speakers of each of the languages ??to agree with the workers. He estimated, for example, that there are around fifteen million Hebrew speakers, up from nine million in Catalan, which undermined the company’s argument that it was more difficult to find moderators for some languages.
In 2023, Telus had 782 market moderators in Spanish, 234 in French, 225 in Portuguese, 138 in Italian and 13 in Catalan in the Glòries tower. Within group A, I had 40 of Hebrew, 14 of Swedish and Danish and 12 of Norwegian. In total, according to the ruling, there were 1,682 content moderators, out of a total of 1,954; Among these are managers, trainers and a team of psychologists who offer support to workers in the toughest moments of work.
The workers who sued the company claimed amounts that ranged between a minimum of 4,400 and 35,950 euros depending on the lost profits, that is, the amounts they stopped receiving due to the linguistic discrimination applied by the company.
