Bulletins

WhatsApp Spanish-language moderators say they're being underpaid

Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram

WhatsApp Spanish-language content moderators have gone public with a petition that says they're paid less than other language content moderators.

Image: Protocol

Spanish-language content moderators for WhatsApp have said in a petition that they are paid $2 less per hour than moderators for any other language.

The moderators are contract workers for WhatsApp, employed by Accenture in Austin, Texas. "We have brought this up in private meetings and in town halls and all to no avail. We have had @Accentures Melody Carson laugh in the faces of agents and told them that if they wanted to get paid, then they needed to learn #portugues or #arabic! We are already #bilingual!" a group of moderators said on Twitter.

The workers have been pushing internally for a change to payment policies since June. The internal petition asks that Spanish-language moderators be paid the same amount as those of other languages, as well as receive backpay for previous work.

Anna Kramer

Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (Twitter: @ anna_c_kramer, email: akramer@protocol.com), where she writes about labor and workplace issues. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.

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