Google terminates 28 employees after multi-city protests

18.04.2024

Google terminated 28 employees on Wednesday, according to an internal memo, following a series of protests over labor conditions and the company’s contract with the Israeli government and military for cloud computing and artificial intelligence services.

This action followed the arrest of nine Google employees on trespassing charges after staging a sit-in at Google offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, including a protest in the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian.

Some of the arrested workers reported being locked out of their work accounts and offices, placed on administrative leave, and instructed to wait for contact from HR before returning to work.

Chris Rackow, Google’s vice president of global security, announced in a memo that the employment of 28 employees involved in the protests had been terminated after an investigation. The protests were organized by the “No Tech for Apartheid” group, focusing on Project Nimbus, a contract between Google, Amazon, and the Israeli government and military for cloud computing services.

The group criticized Google’s actions, stating that the firings were retaliatory and that they had not received any response from company executives regarding their concerns over Project Nimbus in three years of organizing protests.

Protesters in Sunnyvale occupied Kurian’s office for over nine hours, while those in New York occupied a three-floor common space. Five workers from Sunnyvale and four from New York were arrested during the protests.