Alphabet Inc.'s Google Has Terminated 28 Employees

Alphabet Inc.'s Google ( GOOG ) has terminated 28 employees for their involvement in protests against Project Nimbus, a joint $1.2 billion agreement with Amazon.com Inc. to provide AI and cloud services to the Israeli government and military. The protests, organized by the No Tech for Apartheid campaign, took place on Tuesday across Google offices in New York City, Seattle, and Sunnyvale, California. Protesters in New York and California staged a nearly 10-hour sit-in, with others documenting the action through a Twitch livestream. Nine protesters were arrested on trespassing charges.

Several workers involved in the protests, including those not directly engaged in the sit-in, received a message from the company's Employee Relations group informing them that they had been put on leave. Google told the affected employees that it's "keeping this matter as confidential as possible, only disclosing information on a need-to-know basis" in an email seen by Bloomberg. On Wednesday evening, the workers were informed that they were being dismissed by the company, according to a statement from Google staff with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign.

Google's statement regarding the protesters stated, "Physically impeding other employees' work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior. After 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."

The protest took place a day before the Israeli government approved its five-year strategic plan to transition to the cloud under Project Nimbus and expand digital services. Israel's Defense Ministry and military were listed in a government statement as partners in Project Nimbus, along with other government offices. A representative for Google said that the Nimbus contract is "not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services."

Google ( GOOG ) 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's handling of sexual assault allegations claimed that Google punished them for their activism. Four other workers alleged they were fired for organizing opposition to Google's work with federal Customs and Border Protection and for other workplace advocacy.

US 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.

Tech companies like Google ( GOOG ) have a reputation for having "more 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," Logan added.

Two Google employees who were involved in the protest in California told Bloomberg that a group of workers gathered on the sixth floor of Google's Sunnyvale bureau, where Cloud Chief Executive Officer Thomas Kurian's office is located, to show support for those who were staging the sit-in. It's 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's offices, according to the employees.

One worker said Google ( GOOG ) may have framed the move to initially place employees on leave as "confidential" 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.

Beyond the protest, Google ( GOOG ) 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 ( GOOG ) employee said. Moderators locked down some threads on the subject, saying prior discussions had gotten too heated, the employee added.

Despite Google's response, employees demonstrating against Project Nimbus have seen an uptick in support since the sit-in, said one of the fired workers.