More than 50 former Google employees who were fired in connection with protests against the company’s $1.2 billion contract with the government of Israel have filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), alleging unlawful retaliation.
The Verge reports that the complaint comes after a series of events that unfolded last month when Google terminated 28 employees for participating in sit-in protests at its offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California. The protests were organized by the group No Tech For Apartheid to oppose Project Nimbus, a cloud computing contract between Google and the Israeli government.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, attends a press event to announce Google as the new official partner of the Women’s National Team at Google Berlin. Photo: Christoph Soeder/dpa (Photo by Christoph Soeder/picture alliance via Getty Images)
According to the complaint, the fired workers are alleging that Google “retaliated against approximately 50 employees and interfered with their Section 7 rights by terminating and/or placing them on administrative leave in response to their protected concerted activity, namely, participation (or perceived participation) in a peaceful, non-disruptive protest that was directly and explicitly connected to their terms and conditions of work.”
One of the fired employees, a software engineer who wished to remain anonymous, told the Verge that he was terminated despite not actively participating in the protests. The engineer claims he merely went to the lounge area where the protest was taking place to observe and briefly chat with some of the demonstrators.
“I didn’t talk to any of them [protestors], I talked to folks who were standing up, passing out flyers, doing other roles,” the engineer said, adding that he later returned to his desk and finished the workday from a nearby couch. “They didn’t even reach out to me. This was a total shock; I had no hint that this was coming.”
In an internal memo, Chris Rackow, Google’s head of global security, stated that the company would continue to take action against “disruptive behavior,” including termination, if necessary. However, Jane Chung, a spokesperson for No Tech For Apartheid, previously alleged that the firings included “non-participating bystanders.”
The fired software engineer, who was part of the Alphabet Workers Union leadership, expressed concern over what he sees as a shift in Google’s approach to employee dissent. “There’s been a total change in the way Google responds to employees trying to have a voice in their workplace,” he said, contrasting the current situation with past instances where Google workers openly opposed projects like Dragonfly and Maven without facing mass terminations.
Read more at the Verge here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
