Google has fired at least 20 more of its employees for protesting the technology its giving to Israel as the war in Gaza rages on.
This comes after Google fired approximately 30 employees last week after they were arrested for staging sits-ins at the company's offices in Sunnyvale, California and New York City, bringing the total number terminated to around 50.
Google said it fired the additional employees because after an internal investigation, the company identified other staffers who used masks and didn't carry their badges to hide their identities.
No Tech For Apartheid, an organization critical of Google and Amazon's contract with Israel that the fired employees are thought to be associated with, released a statement following the latest terminations.
'Google's aims are clear: the corporation is attempting to quash dissent, silence its workers, and reassert its power over them,' organization spokesperson Jane Chung said in a press release. 'In its attempts to do so, Google has decided to unceremoniously, and without due process, upend the livelihoods of over 50 of its own workers.'
Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai also alluded to last week's protest in an April 18 blog post, burying his response underneath some run-of-the-mill company announcements.
'We also need to be more focused in how we work, collaborate, discuss and even disagree,' Pichai wrote. 'This is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics.'
The pro-Palestinian employees - some of whom were seen wearing traditional Arab headscarves - were protesting 'Project Nimbus,' a $1.2 billion contract wherein Google and Amazon jointly agreed to provide the Israeli government with cloud computing and artificial intelligence services.
The companies signed off on this massive contract in 2021, which predates the October 7 attack from Hamas and the months-long war in Gaza that continues.
Protestors last week occupied Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian's office in Sunnyvale, livestreaming themselves on Twitch until they were taken into custody by police.
Google, in addition to letting their employees go, condemned the protests wholly and completely.
In Google vice president of global security Chris Rackow's companywide memo announcing the termination of some 28 employees, he called the protestors' behavior 'unacceptable.'
'They took over office spaces, defaced our property, and physically impeded the work of other Googlers,' the memo reportedly read.
'Their behavior was unacceptable, extremely disruptive and made co-workers feel threatened.
'Behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it.
'It clearly violates multiple policies that all employees must adhere to – including our code of conduct and policy on harassment, discrimination, retaliation, standards of conduct, and workplace concerns.'
1 comment:
It's the entitlement of this generation.
They have no right to work at Google. Google chose them and can dismiss them at will. And if Google did hire them, it was under condition that they follow workplace rules. If they refuse, Google can fire them.
This is not oppression. This is how the real world works.
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