UK TikTok content moderator legal cases – we’re in court this week
We’re in court this week.
Foxglove is supporting two group of former content moderators from the TikTok London office to bring a case in the UK Employment Tribunal challenging union busting.
On Thursday and Friday this week, the first hearing is taking place.
Content moderators are social media’s essential workers. They do the difficult, traumatising work of removing violent and hate-filled posts from social media, keeping TikTok safe for people like you and me.
The moderators in the London office were organising a union. Then, just days before they were holding a union vote, TikTok made the London content moderation team – hundreds of workers – redundant.
Around the same time, some of the team were told they needed to reapply for newly created roles. Roles involving the same work as their existing jobs.
TikTok said this was standard procedure and had nothing to do with the union. But all the union members (and those supporting and involved with union activities) who applied were unsuccessful and made redundant, while the successful applicants were nonunion members.
This isn’t a one-off. Union busting by Big Tech is a growing problem in the UK and we have multiple cases in the courts supporting workers at Google, Amazon and TikTok to challenge this behaviour. The Labour government has repeatedly said – from its 2024 election manifesto to today – that workers’ rights are central to its plans. Yet, as our cases show, Big Tech seems to be getting away with unlawful anti-union tactics.
That’s why we are supporting two cases against TikTok, working with the employment team at Leigh Day and the United Tech and Allied Workers union (UTAW). This week’s hearing is the first of those.
We’d love to tell you we’ll report back from the hearing as it happens – but we can’t.
Preliminary hearings in the Employment Tribunal are held privately by default. That means the press can’t attend. Foxglove can’t attend. Only TikTok, the moderators and their lawyers are allowed to participate.
We think that means TikTok gets an unfair head start in shaping how the rest of the case unfolds, away from public view. We think this is a major access to justice issue.
This happens in every case we support in the Employment Tribunal – shielding powerful companies from public scrutiny in the early stages of each case. Justice shouldn’t happen behind closed doors, but we have a plan to to fight it.
We’ll be back in touch early next week with whatever we’re able to share, based on advice from our solicitors at Leigh Day.