TikTok’s Retaliation Against Workers Who Complain of Racial Discrimination (Matima & Carter v. ByteDance/TikTok)

Written By Peter Romer-Friedman

Contact: Peter Romer-Friedman, Peter Romer-Friedman Law PLLC, 718-938-6132  peter@prf-law.com; Nnete Matima & Joël Carter, Former TikTok employees (available through their counsel)

September 21, 2023, New York, NY—Today, two Black workers filed a class action charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) alleging that ByteDance Ltd., the company that operates TikTok (“TikTok”), has a pattern or practice of retaliating against its workers of color who complain about racial discrimination. The two named plaintiffs, Nnete Matima and Joël Carter, were terminated by TikTok in August 2023 after they made numerous complaints to TikTok about the race discrimination and retaliation they experienced. They allege that TikTok violated Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act and similar state laws by discriminating and retaliating against them.

In the 17-page class action charge, Ms. Matima and Mr. Carter ask the EEOC to engage in a systemic investigation of how TikTok responds to workers of color who complain about discrimination and retaliation. Both workers allege that they experienced a similar pattern of retaliation from the fall of 2022 through August 2023 after each worker made internal complaints about their managers.  

The workers are represented by Peter Romer-Friedman Law PLLC, a public interest law firm that represents people, non-profits, and unions to advance social and economic justice, including in the areas of employment discrimination, constitutional rights, fair housing, and public accommodations.

Nnete Matima, who worked as a Business Development Representative for TikTok’s Lark Division, said “When I joined TikTok, I thought I finally landed a role with my dream company. I was told my hard work would be rewarded and my creativity would be celebrated. But from day one I was treated worse than my white colleagues. When I told TikTok that my managers were discriminating against me, I was retaliated against in so many ways, my managers called me a ‘Black Snake,’ and TikTok terminated me. It was an absolute nightmare. I’m filing this charge so that no worker has to experience the blatant and harmful retaliation I suffered at TikTok.”

Joël Carter, who worked as a Policy Manager in TikTok’s Ad Policy Team, said “TikTok says that its ‘mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy.’ But TikTok fosters fear and silence among its own workers. And TikTok’s leadership pursues growth at all costs, even if it means discriminating and retaliating against Black professionals like me. I’m sharing my experience to end the pattern of abuse and bias that too many workers of color face and to hold TikTok’s leadership accountable.”

Peter Romer-Friedman, a Principal and Founder of Peter Romer-Friedman Law PLLC and counsel for the workers who filed the charge, said “Most employers tell their workers to report discrimination. But when workers find the courage to file an internal discrimination complaint they often suffer blatant retaliation and lose their jobs. Retaliation is illegal, but it happens all the time in American workplaces. This complaint seeks to end the retaliation that so many workers of color experience when they oppose racial bias and harassment. Every time an employer terminates a worker for filing a discrimination complaint, it sends a clear message to all workers at that company that there will be dire consequences if they stand up for their civil rights.”

As the charge alleges, Ms. Matima was hired in July 2022 to sell TikTok’s Lark software to businesses, but she experienced bias from the very start: her manager denied her an equal opportunity to train for her role, he required her to be responsible for 75% of the sales outreach on a four-person team, and he spoke to her disrespectfully. Ms. Matima alleges that after she complained to TikTok about her manager’s race discrimination in August 2022, the Vice President of her division and her manager called her a “Black Snake” and her supervisors refused to transfer her to other departments that wanted to hire her, reassigned her valuable sales leads to other salespeople, transferred “junk leads” to her, withheld the bonus she had earned, kept her out of important meetings, made false reports about her, issued a poor performance evaluation despite her strong sales figures, and then took away nearly all of her work. TikTok ultimately terminated her on August 11, 2023. As the charge alleges, although Ms. Matima lodged detailed discrimination and retaliation complaints, TikTok twice engaged in sham investigations that led to TikTok concluding that Ms. Matima’s managers did nothing wrong.

Mr. Carter alleges a similar pattern of retaliation by TikTok. He joined TikTok in June 2021 as a Risk Analyst and received an extremely positive performance evaluation for his first year at the company. By February 2022, Mr. Carter’s hard work had paid off and he landed a Policy Manager role on the Ad Policy Team. As the charge alleges, however, Mr. Carter’s new manager treated him worse than his mostly white peers and sabotaged his once-promising career—by preventing Mr. Carter from attending meetings, claiming credit for work that Mr. Carter did, and actively soliciting complaints about Mr. Carter’s demeanor so that he could falsely portray Mr. Carter as angry and tense. As Mr. Carter alleges, he repeatedly asked to be switched to a different manager, but his requests were refused and his manager retaliated against him for his complaints, including by offering hypercritical feedback in group meetings, excluding Mr. Carter from attending a policy summit in London that all other Ad Policy Team peers attended, and continuing to take credit for Mr. Carter’s work.

In February and March 2023, Mr. Carter made detailed discrimination complaints to TikTok. But as Mr. Carter alleges, TikTok officials initially tried to deny that he was complaining about race discrimination, even though he had said he was singled out because he’s Black. And then they barely investigated his complaints—the investigators refused to interview key people Mr. Carter said could corroborate his claims—and found no wrongdoing by his manager. Instead, as Mr. Carter alleges, TikTok concluded that the real problem was Mr. Carter was “frustrated, angry, and tense,” perpetuating a stereotypical, false narrative about Black people being aggressive and angry. And, as the charge alleges, Mr. Carter’s complaints led to even more retaliation, including assigning Mr. Carter to much more basic work instead of the more complex policy work he had previously done, issuing him an informal coaching plan, and giving him an unfair performance evaluation that contained false allegations (like the false claim that he slammed doors in the office). In June 2023, as the charge alleges, TikTok agreed to re-investigate Mr. Carter’s claims, but it conducted another sham investigation and found no wrongdoing by Mr. Carter’s manager. TikTok then terminated him on August 2, 2023.

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Peter Romer-Friedman
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