A Kenyan court has ordered Sama's content moderation partner in Africa to pay April salaries to a section of moderators it had left out days after moderators picketed outside Sama headquarters in Kenya demanding April pay.

Before the court finally ordered Sama to continue paying the moderators, an urgent application was filed on April 27 seeking it be compelled to pay the salaries and observe the orders issued in March.
The 184 moderators sued Sama for allegedly laying them off unlawfully, after it wound down its content review arm in March, and Majorel, the social media giant's new partner in Africa, for blacklisting on instruction by Meta.

Today, the judge has ordered "Sama to continue paying the petitioners being Facebook moderators…and within the terms of the orders given by court".

Court had, on April 28, also issued orders preserving the moderators immigration status. The moderators, drawn from across the continent, including from Ethiopia, Uganda, Somalia and South Africa, were set for deportation.
Social media content review in Africa hangs in balance as moderation partners protest over court restrictions

We take all orders from the court seriously and will continue to follow the detailed advice provided by our counsel to ensure we're working within the bounds of local law," it added in a statement to TechCrunch.

But it added today that a hearing hasn't changed previous advice – Sama is continuing to pay all moderators who have valid contracts, — to mean a majority of the moderators will not be receiving pay, as they "were hired on term contracts that ended at the same time as the expiry of the moderation contract with Facebook," said Sama. Those said to have no contracts were served by Sama to clear with the company by March 11.

After announcing its intentions to wind down its content review arm in January, it issued all its content reviewers with a redundancy notice for March 31-which led to the emergency petition, and the court orders on March 21.

The court issued interlocutory orders restraining Sama from making any form of redundancy, and Meta from hiring Majorel. Majorel was also restrained from blacklisting ex-Sama moderators.

The court allowed Sama to continue doing content review work on Meta's platforms and ordered the company to be the sole provider in Africa pending the determination of the case. However, Sama sent the moderators on compulsory leave in April saying it had no work for them since its contract with Meta had run out.

In court documents, the moderators filed the suit in March alleging that Sama failed to issue redundancy notices, as required by Kenyan law, that the moderators were not issued with a 30-day termination notice, and that their terminal dues were pegged on their signing of non-disclosure documents among other claims. Sama says it observed the Kenyan law, including giving the employees enough notice.

In January, Sama said it was cutting its contract and content review services with Meta and laying off 260 people to focus on label work, or computer vision data annotation. That was months after another lawsuit, filed by Sama's former content moderator, Daniel Motaung, in Kenya.

Motuang, a South African, had charged Sama and Meta with enforced labor, human trafficking, unfair labor relations, anti-union activities, and denial of "adequate" mental health and psychosocial support. Motuang allegedly was fired for organizing a 2019 strike and trying to organize the Sama's workers as a union. Moderators at Sama and Majorel voted earlier this week to form a union.