Google fired 28 employees for their participation in a 10-hour sit-in at the search giant’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, to protest the company’s business ties to the Israeli government, a learned the Post.
The pro-Palestinian employees – who wore traditional Arab headscarves as they stormed and occupied a top executive’s office in California on Tuesday – were fired Wednesday evening after an internal investigation, the vice president said of Google Global Security, Chris Rackow, in a company-wide memo. .
“They invaded offices, defaced our property and physically interfered with the work of other Googlers,” Rackow wrote in the memo obtained by The Post. “Their behavior was unacceptable, extremely disruptive and made their colleagues feel threatened. »
In New York, protesters had occupied the 10th floor of Google’s offices in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood in a demonstration that also spread to the company’s Seattle offices for what it called “No-Tech Day of Action for Genocide.”
“Such behavior has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it,” Rackow wrote. “This clearly violates several policies that all employees must adhere to, including our Code of Conduct and Policy on Harassment, Discrimination, Retaliation, Standards of Conduct and Workplace Concerns.”
Rackow added that the company “takes this extremely seriously and we will continue to enforce our long-standing policies to take action against disruptive behavior – up to and including termination of employment.”
The fired employees are affiliated with a group called No Tech For Apartheid, which has criticized Google’s response to the war between Israel and Hamas.
The group had posted several videos and livestreams of the protests on its X account, including the exact moment employees received a final warning and were arrested by local police for trespassing.
Protesters demanded that Google withdraw from a $1.2 billion “Project Nimbus” contract – in which Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services provide cloud computing and artificial intelligence services to the government and military Israelis.
Critics of the company have raised concerns that the technology could be used as a weapon against Palestinians in Gaza.
Affected workers criticized Google for the layoffs in a statement shared by Jane Chung, spokesperson for No Tech For Apartheid.
“Tonight, Google indiscriminately fired 28 workers, including those of us who did not directly participate in yesterday’s historic ten-hour sit-in on both coasts,” the workers said in the statement. .
“This blatant act of retaliation makes it clear that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers – those who create real value for executives and shareholders. »
“Sundar Pichai and Thomas Kurian are genocide profiteers,” the statement added, referring to Google’s CEO and the CEO of its cloud unit, respectively.
“We cannot understand how these men are able to sleep at night when their technology has killed, disappeared or injured 100,000 Palestinians in the last six months of the Israeli genocide – and counting . »
An NYPD spokesperson said Tuesday’s protest “involved approximately 50 participants” in total and confirmed that “four arrests were made for trespassing inside the Google building.”
The Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety said the California protest “had approximately 80 participants.” In total, five protesters who refused to leave Google’s offices were “arrested without incident for criminal trespass”, arrested and released, a spokesperson added.
It was not immediately clear whether the nine arrested employees were among those fired. Google had previously placed the employees on administrative leave and cut off their access to internal systems.
Last month, Google fired a software engineer who publicly lambasted one of the company’s Israel-based executives at a tech conference in New York.
When reached for comment, a Google spokesperson confirmed the layoffs.
“These protests were part of a long-running campaign by a group of organizations and individuals who mostly do not work at Google,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
“A small number of employee protesters entered and disrupted a few of our sites. Physically obstructing the work of other employees and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a blatant violation of our policies and completely unacceptable behavior.
“We have so far concluded individual investigations which have resulted in the dismissal of 28 employees, and we will continue to investigate and take necessary action,” the spokesperson added.
Protesters stormed Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s personal office in Sunnyvale.
Kurian’s custom-made and framed Golden State Warriors jersey was visible on the office wall in the background of the live stream, and employees wrote a list of their demands on his whiteboard.
The company-wide memo can be read in full below.
Googlers,
You may have seen reports of protests at some of our offices yesterday. Unfortunately, a number of employees hosted the event in our New York and Sunnyvale buildings. They invaded offices, damaged our property, and physically obstructed the work of other Googlers. Their behavior was unacceptable, extremely disruptive and made colleagues feel threatened. We have placed the employees involved under investigation and cut off their access to our systems. Those who refused to leave were arrested by law enforcement and expelled from our offices.
After an investigation, we have today terminated twenty-eight employees involved. We will continue to investigate and take necessary action.
Such behavior has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it. This clearly violates several policies that all employees must adhere to, including our Code of Conduct and our Policy on Harassment, Discrimination, Retaliation, Standards of Conduct, and Workplace Concerns.
We are a place of business and every Googler is expected to read our policies and apply them to how they behave and communicate in our workplace. The overwhelming majority of our employees are doing the right thing. If you’re one of the few people who thinks we’ll overlook behavior that violates our policies, think again. The company takes this extremely seriously and we will continue to enforce our long-standing policies to take action against disruptive behavior – up to and including termination of employment.
You should expect to hear more from leaders about standards of behavior and discourse in the workplace.
Chris
News Source : nypost.com
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