"Google fires workers protesting $1.2 billion Israeli contract"

" Google fires workers protesting $1.2 billion Israeli contract \r\n\r\nAlphabet Inc.\u2019s Google has 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.\r\n\r\nThe protests, which were led by the No Tech for Apartheid\u00a0organization, took place Tuesday across Google offices in New York City,\u00a0Seattle, and Sunnyvale, California. Protesters in New York and California staged a nearly 10-hour sit-in, with others documenting the action, including through a Twitch livestream. Nine of them were arrested Tuesday evening on trespassing charges.\r\n\r\nSeveral workers involved in the protests, including those who were not directly engaged in the sit-in, received a message from the company\u2019s Employee Relations group\u00a0informing them that they had been put on leave. Google told the affected employees\u00a0 that it\u2019s \u201ckeeping this matter as confidential as possible, only disclosing information on a need to know basis\u201d in an email seen by Bloomberg. On Wednesday evening, the workers\u00a0were informed they were being dismissed by the company, according to a statement from Google staff\u00a0with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign.\r\n\r\n\u201cPhysically impeding other employees\u2019\u00a0work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior,\u201d Google said in a statement about the protesters. \u201cAfter refusing multiple requests to leave the premises, law enforcement was engaged to remove them to ensure office safety. We have so far concluded individual investigations that resulted in the termination of employment for 28 employees, and will continue to investigate and take action as needed.\u201d\r\n\r\nGoogle has long favored a culture of open debate, but employee activism in recent years has tested that commitment. Workers who organized a 2018 walkout over the company\u2019s handling of sexual assault allegations said Google punished them for their activism. Four other workers alleged they were fired for organizing opposition to Google\u2019s work with federal Customs and Border Protection and for other workplace advocacy.\r\n\r\nUS labor law gives employees the right to engage in collective action related to working conditions. Tech workers will likely argue that this should grant them the ability to band together to object to how the tools they create are used, said John Logan, a professor of labor at San Francisco State University.\r\n\r\n\u201cTech workers are not like other kinds of workers,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can make an argument in this case that having some sort of say or control or ability to protest about how their work product is being used is actually a sort of key issue.\u201d\r\n\r\nTech companies like Google have a reputation for having \u201cmore egalitarian and very cosmopolitan work cultures, but when they encountered labor activism among their own workers, they actually responded in a sort of quite draconian way,\u201d Logan added.\r\n\r\nTwo Googlers who were involved in the protest in California told Bloomberg that a group of workers gathered on the sixth floor of Google\u2019s Sunnyvale bureau, where Cloud Chief Executive Officer Thomas Kurian\u2019s office is located, to show support for those who were staging the sit-in. It\u2019s unclear how Google identified participants in the protest, as only some had their badges scanned by security personnel, and some of those who were fired were outside Google\u2019s offices,\u00a0according to the employees.\r\n\r\nOne worker said Google may have framed the move to initially place employees on leave as \u201cconfidential\u201d to save face publicly, and argued that the protesters did not violate any company policies. The protesters left the building as soon as they were asked to and did not obstruct or disrupt others at the company, the person said.\r\n\r\nBeyond the protest, Google has struggled with how to manage internal debate about the Middle East conflict. After the demonstration, posts on internal Google forums featured a mix of pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli sentiment, with a number of other workers saying they felt the topic was inappropriate for the workplace, a Google employee said. Moderators locked down some threads on the subject, saying prior discussions had gotten too heated, the employee added.\r\n\r\nDespite Google\u2019s response, employees demonstrating against Project Nimbus have seen an uptick in support since the sit-in, said one of the fired workers."

"Google fires workers protesting $1.2 billion Israeli contract"

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