A trio of Facebook employees who used to work as content moderators for the company have agreed to break their non-disclosure agreements and stepped forward to draw the public's attention to the dismal working conditions they had to contend with at a site in Tampa operated by a professional services vendor named Cognizant, The Verge reports.
According to the media outlet, the workers described "a filthy workplace in which they regularly find pubic hair and other bodily waste at their workstations", and where managers "laugh off or ignore sexual harassment and threats of violence".
One incident mentioned in the report mentioned one employee, an ex-Coast Guard named Keith Utley, suffering a heart attack at his desk and dying shortly after when it turned out that there was no defibrillator on site.
"We were bodies in seats. We were nothing to them — at all", one former moderator remarked.
And as Cognizant apparently has a tendency of firing its workers for missing work, and Florida laws don't require employers to offer sick leave, workers who end up exhausting their allotted break time due to feeling ill end up coming to work while sick, "and occasionally vomit in trash cans on the production floor".
A Cognizant spokesperson stated, however, that they take such allegations "very seriously" and they strive to "create a safe and empowering workplace".
