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By Inti Landauro
MADRID/BARCELONA (Reuters) -Canadian-based tech company Telus sent home as many as 2,000 people from its content moderation centre in Barcelona after Facebook owner Meta Platforms severed its contract, local unions CCOO and UGT said.
The company - operating locally as CCC Barcelona Digital Services - emailed its workers on Thursday placing them on gardening leave saying a client warned on April 1 it would suspended services.
The email, which Reuters had access to, did not specify who the client was, but UGT and CCOO said Telus' client was Meta.
One former and one current employee, who requested anonymity as they signed non-disclosure agreements, said the team was moderating content for Meta.
"Our clients are diversifying their presence and transferring their services to other locations," Telus said, adding the contract continued. The company will provide support to all the affected team members during negotiations with the unions.
A Meta spokesperson said the company has moved the services that were being performed from Barcelona to other locations and the company is not reducing its content review efforts.
Meta invested billions and hired thousands of content moderators globally over the years to police sensitive content, but in January it scrapped its U.S. fact-checking programme, following the election of President Donald Trump.
It also said it will stop proactively scanning for hate speech and other types of rule-breaking, reviewing such posts only in response to user reports.
Employees were placed on leave, with full salaries but no work to carry out, while Telus negotiates severance with unions, the email sent to workers said.
The company suspended its operations at noon on Thursday and asked employees at work to leave the office, located in Barcelona's landmark Glories tower downtown.
The team in Barcelona included content moderation services in Catalan, Dutch, French, Hebrew, Portuguese and Spanish, according to the former employee.
Other content moderation centres in countries such as Bulgaria, Colombia and Portugal that used to collaborate with the staff in Barcelona, the current employee said, although a Telus spokesperson said some of these centres are run by other companies.
(Reporting by Inti Landauro, Supantha Mukherjee and Joan Faus, editing by Aislinn Laing, Barbara Lewis and David Evans)
