Google has terminated the employment of over twenty-five individuals in response to their participation in protests against the company’s cloud-computing agreement with the Israeli government.
According to a companywide email from Chris Rackow, Google’s vice president for global security, the workers were fired following an internal investigation that found their involvement in protests held on Tuesday at the company’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California. Rackow stated that their behavior during the protests was deemed unacceptable, highly disruptive, and caused their colleagues to feel threatened.
According to a Google spokesperson, the act of physically obstructing the work of other employees and denying them access to company facilities goes against our policies and is considered completely unacceptable behavior. In this particular case, after numerous requests for the individuals to leave the premises were ignored, law enforcement was called upon to ensure the safety of the office.
According to No Tech for Apartheid, the organization responsible for the protests, nine demonstrators were arrested. No Tech claims that the protests were peaceful.
According to a post on social media by the group, demonstrators made their way into an office utilized by Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian.
In a statement, No Tech asserted that Google employees possess the fundamental right to engage in peaceful protests regarding their working conditions. They firmly believe that the recent dismissals were a direct form of retaliation.
The protests were in response to Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion joint contract between Amazon and the Israeli government for AI and cloud services. No Tech, in its statement, referred to a recent report by Time Magazine which revealed Google’s development of specialized tools for Israel’s Ministry of Defense and their contracts with the Israeli Occupation Forces.
According to a spokesperson from Google, the company provides its cloud computing services to various governments worldwide, including the Israeli government. It is important to note that this support is not intended for highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads related to weapons or intelligence services.
