Google employees fired for protesting Israeli contract files with NLRB complaint

A software engineer who was fired from Google in connection with internal protests at the company’s offices says the company retaliated against him for merely attending the demonstration against an Israeli defense contract.

The former employee, who asked to remain anonymous, said he went to the 10th floor lounge of Google’s New York office around lunchtime to check out the protest.

“When I got there, there were probably about 20 people sitting on the floor. I didn’t speak to any of them, I spoke to people who were standing, handing out leaflets, doing other roles,” he said, adding that the protesters were wearing matching T-shirts.

The worker then returned to his desk before returning to the protest at around 5pm. “I talked to them for about four minutes, like, ‘Oh my God, you’re still sitting here! How are you?’” he said. So he finished the day’s work on a nearby couch. The worker says he returned to Google the next day without incident. That night, during dinner, he received an email from Google informing him that he had been fired.

“I think it’s all part of this larger context of Google suppressing workers’ voices,” said the former employee, who worked at Google for almost three years and was part of the leadership of the Alphabet Workers Union. (The Alphabet Workers Union is a union without a contractwhich means it has not been recognized by the NLRB.)

Google initially placed nine employees on administrative leave for occupying its offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California, in protest of Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli government. These workers were also arrested. The company then fired 28 employees in connection with the protests. In an internal memo to employees, Chris Rackow, Google’s head of global security, said the company would take further action if necessary.

“The overwhelming majority of our employees do the right thing,” Rackow’s statement read. “If you are one of the few who is tempted to think that we will ignore conduct that violates our policies, think again. The company takes this very seriously and we will continue to enforce our long-standing policies to take action against disruptive behavior – including termination.”

Less than a week later, Google fired more than 20 other employees, some of whom said they had not participated in the protests.

In a statement to On the edgeGoogle spokesperson Bailey Tomson said the company investigated the “physical disruption within our buildings on April 16, reviewing additional details provided by co-workers who were physically disturbed” to determine which workers were involved.”

But the software engineer who was fired says he was never contacted by HR or asked whether he was actually involved in the protests. “They didn’t even look for me,” he said. “This was a complete shock; I had no idea this was coming.”

The worker said that while he was watching the protest, a security guard approached him and others in the hall and asked to see their Google badges to make sure there were no outside participants. “It didn’t even occur to me that I shouldn’t show him my badge. He is the security guard at the place where I work and I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” said the worker.

More than 50 workers who were fired by Google in connection with protests against the company’s ties to the Israeli government filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board on Monday. The workers have alleged illegal retaliation and are asking for their jobs back, according to an emailed statement from No Tech For Apartheid, the group that organized the protests.

Google “retaliated against approximately 50 employees and interfered with their Section 7 rights by firing them and/or placing them on administrative leave in response to their protected concerted activity, i.e., participation (or alleged participation) in a peaceful protest and non-disruptive that was directly and explicitly linked to their terms and conditions of employment,” the complaint says.

Jane Chung, spokesperson for No Tech For Apartheid, previously said On the edge that the dismissals included “non-participating spectators.” Google disputes this. Tomson, a Google spokesperson, said On the edge that all of the workers who were fired were “personally and definitely involved in disruptive activities within our buildings.”

This is a marked departure from the way Google has handled employee dissent in the past. In 2018, more than 600 Google employees signed an open letter opposing Project Dragonfly, an effort to build a search engine for China. As On the edge reported at the time, the petition began with an internally shared Google Doc, and all subsequent steps were also organized using Google products. Employees also called on Google to abandon Project Maven, its contract with the US Department of Defense. That same year, more than 20,000 Google employees organized a strike in protest of the company’s handling of sexual harassment allegations against executives.

Meredith Whittaker, a program manager at Google who helped organize the 2018 walkout, left the company in 2019 of her own free will. In 2019, workers also held a demonstration protesting alleged retaliation against their colleagues who spoke out.

“There has been a complete shift in how Google responds to employees trying to have a voice in the workplace,” said the fired software engineer. “It’s night and day for Google from five, ten years ago.”