26 employees sue Meta: Taking sick leave or parental leave can also lead to their layoffs

IT House reported on July 15 that according to a report by Business Insider today (15th), 26 current and former Meta employees who chose to remain anonymous filed a lawsuit, accusing Meta of using the AI ​​workplace management system to lower performance evaluations because employees took medical leave or parental leave, and then included employees on the layoff list. On the 13th local time, these 26 employees filed a complaint with the U.S. Federal Court for the Northern District of California. The plaintiff said that before Meta laid off about 8,000 positions in May this year, it used AI tools and employee monitoring data to conduct ratings, and then ranked employees according to the rating results. The plaintiffs allege that Meta uses metrics such as work output, software development activity and AI tool usage, but employees cannot accrue these data during legally protected leave periods. Meta does not correct the metric for time off, causing reduced output due to medical leave, maternity leave, and disability to be considered poor job performance. "Meta did not rely on the careful judgment of managers familiar with its employees' work when formulating its layoff lists," the lawsuit states. Employees allege that Meta relied on systems including Metamate, an internal AI chatbot, an AI usage dashboard, a "second brain" agent trained by employees and capable of replicating portions of work output, employee activity monitoring data, and AI-assisted performance evaluation and calibration tools. Employees also allege that Meta measures employee adoption of AI against internal categories such as “AI native,” “AI first,” and “AI enabled,” with ratings declining while employees are away. The court has not yet tested the above allegations. A Meta spokesperson responded: "The above statement is baseless and inconsistent with the facts. People management and organizational decisions have always been made by people, not AI." Meta has recently been asking employees to increase their use of AI and track usage through internal dashboards and rankings. IT House learned that Meta also launched a performance system called Checkpoint this year.