- An internal memo from Google says the company fired 28 employees this week because of sit-ins at two of its offices.
- Some in the sit-in protest occupied the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian until they were forcibly removed by law enforcement.
- Google warned that the company would take more action if needed: “If you’re one of the few people who tends to think we’ll ignore violations of our policies, think again.”
Fired for ‘violating company policy’
Google fired 28 employees this week over sit-ins at two of their offices, according to an internal memo. On Tuesday, nine employees were suspended and arrested in New York and California.
The fired employees were involved in a protest against Google’s involvement in Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion Israeli government cloud contract that also included Amazon. Some of them occupied the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian until they were forcibly removed by law enforcement. Last month, Google fired another employee for protesting the contract during a company presentation in Israel.
In a memo sent to all employees on Wednesday, Chris Rackow, Google’s global head of security, said, “Behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it.”
He also warned that the company would take more action if needed: “The vast majority of our employees are doing the right thing. If you are one of the few people who tend to think that we will ignore violations of our policies, think again. The company takes this very seriously, and we will continue to apply our longstanding policy to take action – including termination – against disruptive behavior.
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Whether there is revenge
In a statement responding to the protest, Apartheid Without Technology, the group behind the protest, called Google’s firing a “blatant act of retaliation.”
“In the three years since our organisation campaigned against the Nimbus project, we have yet to hear from a single executive about our concerns,” the group wrote in a post on Medium. “Google workers have the right to peacefully protest our labor terms and conditions. The dismissals appear to have been clearly retaliatory.
