Laid off workers at Meta contractor Covalen to mount strike action following loss of 700 jobs

Trade union representing Covalen workers have demanded the end of a "two-tiered treatment" of outsourced tech workers 

Covalen workers protesting outside Leinster House. Photograph: Sasko Lazarov / © RollingNews.ie

Members of the Communications Workers Union (CWU) at the Meta contractor Covalen will mount a second day of strike action on Friday with the group demanding the end of a "two-tiered treatment" of outsourced tech workers. 

Covalen announced in April that it was proposing to make 700 workers redundant at its office in Dublin.

The company, a subsidiary of CPL, provides a range of services to Meta including content moderation and employs about 2,000 people at its base in Sandyford. It followed the loss of more than 300 jobs in the previous November. 

Now, the CWU said it will mount pickets outside Covalen’s offices at Haddington Road, Dublin 4 on Friday, coming from first assembling at Leinster House earlier in the day. 

The trade union said the action comes amid growing anger at the "starkly unequal political response to redundancies in Ireland’s tech sector."

"Covalen workers have been seeking fair redundancy terms and meaningful collective engagement following the announcement of over 720 proposed redundancies by the company, which provides outsourced services to major tech multinationals including Meta."

"This week, following Meta’s direct redundancy announcement, Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke publicly declared that “the Government will have your back” and confirmed that IDA Ireland would engage closely with Meta regarding the impact of the job losses. 

"In stark contrast, repeated requests by the CWU for Government engagement on the significantly larger redundancy process affecting outsourced Meta workers at Covalen have gone unanswered."

CWU Head of Organising, Fionnuala Ní Bhrógáin said the Covalen dispute was raising urgent and far-reaching questions about the adequacy of Irish labour law for the modern, outsourced and AI-affected economy.

"When directly employed tech workers face redundancy, Government engagement is immediate, visible and energetic. But when outsourced workers performing essential work for the very same multinational face even larger job losses, the response is silence.

“A worker is a worker, regardless of whose name is on their contract. The Government cannot continue to preside over a two-tier system of employment protections within the tech sector.”

The CWU said it is seeking urgent Government engagement and a formal review of collective redundancy protections in Ireland, including mechanisms requiring collective engagement and consultation, a guaranteed right to trade union involvement, robust protections within outsourced employment structures, and the development of a national strategy to address the impact of AI-driven restructuring on workers’ jobs.

It is also seeking the removal of restrictive ‘cooling-off’ periods that prevent workers from accessing future employment within the sector.