 |
CNN News : Google fires 28 employees for protesting Israel cloud deal
Google has fired more than two dozen employees who protested this week against the company’s cloud computing contract with the Israeli government.
The workers were dismissed after an investigation found that they had staged protests inside Google’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California. In Sunnyvale, they entered the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, according to a post on X by the group that organized the demonstration, No Tech For Apartheid.
Protesters held banners that read “No More Genocide For Profit” and “We Stand with Palestinian, Arab and Muslim Googlers.”
A Google spokesperson told CNN Thursday that the protests “were part of a long-standing campaign by a group of organizations and people who largely don’t work” at the company.
“A small number of employee protesters entered and disrupted a few of our locations. 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,” the spokesperson added.
“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.”
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/18/tech/google-fires-employees-israel/index.htmlTime: Google Fires 28 Workers Involved in Protests Over $1.2 Billion Israeli Contract
Alphabet Inc.’s Google has fired 28 employees after they were involved in protests against Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion joint contract with Amazon.com Inc. to provide the Israeli government with AI and cloud services.
The protests, which were led by the No Tech for Apartheid organization, took place 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, including through a Twitch livestream. Nine of them were arrested Tuesday evening on trespassing charges.
Several workers involved in the protests, including those who were 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 they were being dismissed by the company, according to a statement from Google staff with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign.
“Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior,” Google said in a statement about the protesters.... READ MORE& As always please go to the original links to read the stories in full... and remember that once upon a time brave Black heroes sat at lunch counters in violation of American laws & policies. I am not advocating stopping any one from doing their job, or jeopardizing your own job at any company. Just be smart, be kind, and be careful.
