Were Meta workers laid off for taking medical leave?

Meta employees claim their livelihoods are at the mercy of an algorithm. Again. 

Twenty-six workers have accused Meta of using faulty, AI-driven performance metrics to gauge employee productivity and dictate layoffs. That’s because the metrics didn’t account for workers dealing with illness, pregnancy, bereavement, or disabilities.

The lawsuit spells it out directly. “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.”

TL;DR — This flawed scoring system (allegedly) led to illegal layoffs, since medical and family leave is protected at the federal and state level.

Which means, this case could set a major precedent.

The lawsuit at a glance:

Meta denies allegations of illegal or unethical protocols, stating: “Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI.”

This case is a continuation of a story that began earlier this year, when Meta laid off around 8,000 employees (or ~10% of its total workforce). However, this strategic move is both controversial and common amongst corporations, as many companies reroute money into new AI initiatives.

But even still, Meta’s tactics were… messy. 

The company used AI to keep tabs on employee activity, down to their daily keystrokes. Leaders also prompted their teams to train personal AI agents as “second brains” that could effectively do their jobs.

Overall, this case is bigger than the layoffs themselves. It’s interrogating whether AI is becoming a shortcut for treating workers like a set of metrics instead of people.

Meta may call it optimization. But workers are calling their lawyers.

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I think “protected leave” should be… protected. - TL