Facebook parent company Meta cancels logistics outsourcing contract at Silicon Valley headquarters: causing hundreds of job losses

Facebook’s parent company Meta canceled a back-office contract at its Silicon Valley headquarters, which will cost hundreds of workers at the outsourcing company their jobs.

It is reported that the logistics services of Meta’s Silicon Valley headquarters are outsourced to the American “ABM Industrial Company”. And in mid-June, Meta informed the company that the partnership would be canceled. The layoffs resulting from the cancellation will take effect July 25, according to a regulatory report the outsourcing company submitted to the California Department of Labor Development.

ABM, which filed a report on July 1, said the layoffs will affect 368 ABM employees working at Meta’s headquarters (1 Hacker Drive, Menlo Park, Calif.), the company’s human resources manager said.

The logistical service jobs that have been cut include kitchen cleaners, night cleaners, park bicycle organizers, cafe waiters, etc. The layoffs also include 10 directors and seven managers.

ABM company sources said that the logistics outsourcing companies Meta will recruit in the future may retain some positions and continue to hire the affected workers, but the specific recruitment plans of the new outsourcing companies are not yet clear.

The downsizing this time comes at a time when Meta’s business development is facing many uncertainties. Worsening U.S. inflation and Apple’s new privacy policy for iOS have caused Meta’s revenue growth to slow down and even face a year-over-year decline.

In May, Meta said that it would suspend the social recruitment plan. When it announced its first-quarter financial report, Meta also said that there may be a year-on-year decline in operating income in the second quarter.

In the above-mentioned regulatory report, ABM did not address the specific reasons for Meta’s termination of the cooperation agreement. A Meta spokesman said the company plans to switch to a back-office outsourcer, but did not elaborate on how many existing jobs would be retained under the new partnership.

ABM is a publicly traded facility management and logistics service company in the United States with a total workforce of 100,000 people. When it released its fourth-quarter earnings report last year, the company disclosed that the list of customers for logistics outsourcing included technology companies such as Meta, Google and Adobe. ABM also mentioned that, among all clients, these tech companies are expanding the size of their offices for outsourcing logistics services.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Meta’s office park has begun to quiet down, with the company adopting a work-from-home model for its employees. Today, Meta is preparing to bring employees back to the office, though the company is also giving employees the option to work from home permanently. In May, Meta opened some office buildings in California’s Bay Area, bringing some employees back to the office.

Last week, Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said that this year’s planned hiring of engineers would be cut by at least 30 percent. On Monday, US media reported that Meta’s management encouraged employees to report poor performers around them to their superiors, saying “these people are dragging down our company.”

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