Google fired 28 employees who were involved in a protest against the provision of AI and cloud services to Israel, according to a Bloomberg report.
A protest led by the organization No Tech for Apartheid was held at Google offices in New York, Seattle and Sunnyville, California. The protestors in New York and California barricaded themselves in the offices for nearly 10 hours, and the event was filmed and broadcast live. Nine of them were arrested during the protests on Tuesday on charges of trespassing.
The protesting workers oppose the Nimbus project, a joint contract with Amazon worth $1.2 billion to provide cloud services and artificial intelligence to the Israeli government.
According to the report, some of the workers who participated in the protest, including those who did not take a direct part in barricading the offices, received a notice of dismissal. Google told employees that they are working to "keep this matter as confidential as possible, and share information only on the basis of a tangible need." The reason for the dismissals, according to the company's statement, was that the protest "physically prevented other employees from working and denied them access to the facilities in flagrant violation of policy. This is unacceptable behavior."
They also added in the statement that the protestors did not respond to multiple calls to evacuate, so law enforcement authorities were called to the scene "and worked to keep them away for the sake of the safety of the office." Google also stated that, after internal investigations, it was decided to fire 28 of the employees. "We will continue to investigate and take action as necessary."
Chris Rakow, Google's global security director, also sent a message to employees following the incident. "This type of behavior has no place in our offices and we will not accept it," he wrote. "The overwhelming majority of our employees are doing the right thing. If you are one of the few who are tempted to think that we will ignore behavior that violates our policy, think again. The company takes this very seriously, and we will continue to implement the policy and take action against disruptive behavior, including through dismissal."
U.S. labor laws give workers the right to engage in collective action regarding working conditions. It is expected that workers will argue that their actions fall under this law, which allows them to band together to protest the way the tools they make are used, according to John Logan, a labor law lecturer at the University of San Francisco.
Two Google employees who were involved in the protest in California told Bloomberg that another group of employees gathered on the sixth floor near the office of Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, to show support for the protesters. However, it is not clear how Google managed to identify the participants since only a few of them used their employee badges. They also claimed that some of the fired people were out of the offices at the time of the protests.