A large group of Google employees hold signs protesting their company’s participation in “Project Nimbus”. Picture: X/@NoTechApartheid
Tech giant Google has fired at least 28 employees over their protest of the company’s business ties with the Israeli government.
The pro-Palestinian employees participated in the 10-hour sit-in at the search giant’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California on Tuesday.
According to the New York Post, the employees stormed and occupied the office of a top executive.
The group posted several videos and livestreams of the protests on its X account — including the exact moment that employees were issued final warnings and arrested by local police for trespassing.
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Google vice president of global security Chris Rackow said the employees were terminated late on Wednesday after an internal investigation.
“They took over office spaces, defaced our property, and physically impeded the work of other Googlers,” Rackow wrote in the memo obtained by The Post. “Their behaviour was unacceptable, extremely disruptive, and made co-workers feel threatened.”
“Behaviour 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,” Rackow said.
Rackow added that the Google “takes this extremely seriously, and we will continue to apply our longstanding policies to take action against disruptive behavior – up to and including termination”.
The protesters have demanded that Google pull out of a $1.2 billion “Project Nimbus” contract — in which Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services provide cloud-computing and artificial intelligence services for the Israeli government and military.
The impacted workers blasted Google over the firings in a statement shared by No Tech For Apartheid spokesperson Jane Chung.
“This evening, Google indiscriminately fired 28 workers, including those among us who did not directly participate in yesterday’s historic, bicoastal 10-hour sit-in protests,” the workers said in the statement.
“This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers — the ones who create real value for executives and shareholders.”
The workers alleged Sundar Pichai (Google CEO) and Thomas Kurian (Cloud CEO) are genocide profiteers.
“We cannot comprehend how these men are able to sleep at night while their tech has enabled 100 000 Palestinians killed, reported missing, or wounded in the last six months of Israel’s genocide — and counting,” they said.
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