Google fires 28 employees after anti-Israel protests

AAlphabet Inc.’s Google fired 28 employees after they were involved in protests against Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion joint contract with Amazon.com Inc. to provide the Israeli government with AI and cloud services .

See more information: Google contract shows agreement with Israel Ministry of Defense

The protests, led by the organization No Tech for Apartheid, took place on Tuesday at Google offices in New York City, Seattle and Sunnyvale, California. Protesters in New York and California held a nearly 10-hour protest, with others documenting the action, including via a live stream on Twitch. Nine of them were arrested on Tuesday night on trespassing charges.

Several workers involved in the protests, including those who were not directly involved in the demonstration, received a message from the company’s Employee Relations group informing them that they had been placed on leave. Google told affected employees that it is “keeping this matter as confidential as possible, releasing information only when necessary” in an email seen by Bloomberg. On Wednesday night, the workers were informed that they were being fired by the company, according to a statement from the Google team behind the No Tech for Apartheid campaign.

“Physically impeding other employees from working and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies and completely unacceptable behavior,” Google said in a statement about the protesters. “After refusing several requests to leave the premises, authorities were hired to remove them to ensure the safety of the office. We have so far completed individual investigations that have resulted in the termination of the employment of 28 employees and will continue to investigate and take necessary action.”

See more information: Google employees revolt against $1.2 billion contract with Israel

Google has long favored a culture of open debate, but employee activism in recent years has tested that commitment. Workers who organized a strike in 2018 over the company’s handling of sexual assault allegations said Google punished them for their activism. Four other workers alleged they were fired for organizing opposition to Google’s work with federal Customs and Border Protection and for other workplace advocacy.

U.S. labor law gives employees the right to participate in class action lawsuits related to working conditions. Tech workers will likely argue that this should grant them the ability to band together to oppose how the tools they create are used, said John Logan, a labor professor at San Francisco State University.

“Tech workers are not like other types of workers,” he said. “You could argue, in this case, that having some sort of say, control, or ability to protest how your work product is being used is actually kind of a fundamental issue.”

Tech companies like Google have a reputation for having “more egalitarian and very cosmopolitan work cultures, but when they encountered labor activism among their own workers, they actually responded in a pretty draconian way,” Logan added.

Two Googlers who were involved in the protest in California told Bloomberg that a group of workers gathered on the sixth floor of Google’s Sunnyvale office, where Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s office is located, to show support for those who were organizing the protest. protest. . It’s unclear how Google identified the protest participants, as only a few had their badges scanned by security personnel and some of those who were fired were outside Google offices, according to employees.

One employee said Google may have framed the move to initially place employees on leave as “confidential” to save face publicly, and argued that the protesters did not violate any company policies. Protesters left the building as soon as they were asked and did not obstruct or disrupt others in the business, the person said.

In addition to the protest, Google has struggled with how to manage the internal debate about the conflict in the Middle East. After the rally, posts on Google’s internal forums featured a mix of pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli sentiments, with several other workers saying they felt the issue was inappropriate for the workplace, a Google employee said. Moderators blocked some threads on the issue, saying previous discussions had become too heated, the employee added.

Despite Google’s response, employees who spoke out against Project Nimbus have seen an increase in support since the protest, one of the fired workers said.