Meta workers are posting flyers in bathroom stalls

The action comes roughly a week before Meta is expected to begin notifying the approximately 8,000 employees caught in its first round of layoffs this year. It is the most visible sign yet of a labor movement taking shape inside one of Silicon Valley’s giants — and it arrives at a moment when the pressures driving it are anything but unique to Meta.

What’s Actually Happening

HRD America has tracked Meta’s restructuring closely since early 2026. The company confirmed it would cut approximately 10% of its workforce, reorganizing survivors into AI-focused “pods” under its Superintelligence Labs division. A second round of cuts is planned for the second half of the year. The tech sector has already shed more than 95,000 jobs across 247 separate layoff events in 2026 — an average of 882 positions a day, according to Trueup data.

Into that environment, Meta installed software that captures mouse movements, clicks, and navigation patterns on employee computers. Spokesperson Andy Stone offered a clean business rationale: “If we’re building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people actually use them.”

Employees heard something different. The flyers and an associated online petition cite the National Labor Relations Act, informing signatories that workers are “legally protected when they choose to organize for the improvement of working conditions.” In the U.K., a group of Meta employees has simultaneously launched a formal union drive with United Tech and Allied Workers, naming their campaign website “Leanin.uk” — a pointed reference to former COO Sheryl Sandberg’s best-selling book. “Meta’s workers are paying the price for management’s reckless and expensive bets,” said UTAW organizer Eleanor Payne. “Staff are facing devastating job cuts, draconian surveillance, and the cruel reality of being forced to train the inefficient systems being positioned to replace them.”

The NLRA Dimension HR Can’t Ignore

The protest flyers’ invocation of the National Labor Relations Act is not rhetorical decoration — it is a direct legal signal, and HR leaders should treat it as one.