Google sacks 28 workers who participated in a protest against the company’s $1.2 billion contract with Israel.
Google sacks 28 workers. Google has dismissed 28 employees who took part in a 10-hour sit-in protest at the company’s New York and Sunnyvale, California offices, opposing its business connections with the Israeli government.
The protest, led by pro-Palestinian staff, involved occupying the office of a senior executive in California while wearing traditional Arab headscarves on Tuesday, April 16.
Following an internal investigation, the employees were terminated on Wednesday, April 17, as confirmed in a companywide memo by Google’s vice president of global security, Chris Rackow.
“They took over office spaces, defaced our property, and physically impeded the work of other Googlers,” Rackow wrote in the memo.
“Their behavior was unacceptable, extremely disruptive, and made co-workers feel threatened.”
Protesters in New York took over the 10th floor of Google’s offices located in the Chelsea section of Manhattan as part of a demonstration that also spread to the company’s offices in Seattle, marking what they termed “No Tech for Genocide Day of Action.”
“Behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it,” Rackow wrote.
“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 added that the company “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 dismissed employees are members of a group known as No Tech For Apartheid, which has expressed dissatisfaction with Google’s handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
The affected workers criticized Google for their terminations in a statement released by Jane Chung, a spokesperson for No Tech For Apartheid.
“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.”
“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 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.”
