Alphabet Inc.’s Google fired 28 employees after they were caught up in protests against Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion joint contract with Amazon.com Inc. to provide the Israeli government with artificial intelligence and cloud services.
The protests, led by the organization No Tech for Apartheid, took place Tuesday at Google offices in New York, Seattle and Sunnyvale, California. Protesters in New York and California staged a nearly 10-hour sit-in, while others documented the action, including through a live stream on Twitch. Nine of them were arrested Tuesday evening on charges of trespassing.
Several workers involved in the protests, including those who were not directly involved in the sit-in, 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 “will keep the matter as confidential as possible, disclosing information only on a need-to-know basis” in an email seen by Bloomberg.
Workers were informed of the firing by the company on Wednesday evening, according to a statement from Google employees as part of the No Tech for Apartheid campaign.
“Physically impeding the work of other employees 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 multiple requests to vacate the premises, law enforcement agreed to remove them to ensure the security of the office. To date, we have concluded individual investigations that have led to the termination of employment for 28 employees and we will continue to investigate and take action as necessary.”
Google has long supported a culture of open debate, but employee activism in recent years has put that commitment to the test. Workers who staged a strike in 2018 over the company’s handling of sexual assault allegations said Google punished them for their activism. Four other workers said they were fired for organizing opposition to Google’s work with federal Customs and Border Protection and other workplace advocacy activities.
US labor law gives employees the right to engage in class actions related to working conditions. Tech workers will likely argue that this should grant them the ability to unite 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. “In this case it can be argued that having some sort of say, control or ability to protest over how their work product is used is actually some sort of key issue.”
Tech companies like Google have a reputation for having “more egalitarian and very cosmopolitan work cultures, but when they encountered union activism among their own workers, they actually responded in a rather draconian way,” Logan added.
Two Googlers involved in the California protest 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 sit-in. . It’s unclear how Google identified protest participants, as only some had their badges scanned by security staff and some of those fired were outside Google offices, according to employees.
One worker said Google may have characterized the move to initially place employees on leave as “publicly face-saving,” and argued that the protesters did not violate any company policies. The protesters left the building as soon as they were asked and did not obstruct or disturb others at the business, the person said.
Beyond the protest, Google has struggled with how to handle internal debate over the Middle East conflict. After the rally, posts on Google’s internal forums featured a mix of pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli sentiment, with a number of other workers saying they thought the topic was inappropriate for the workplace, one said Google employee. Moderators blocked some discussions on the topic, saying previous discussions had become too heated, the employee added.
Despite Google’s response, employees demonstrating against the Nimbus project saw an increase in support after the sit-in, one of the fired workers said.