Disrupting a Workplace Leads to Deserved Termination of Employment

"Google's aims are clear; the corporation is attempting to quash dissent, silence its workers and reassert its power over them."

"In its attempts to do so, Google has decided to unceremoniously, and without due process, upend the livelihoods of over fifty of its own workers."

Jane Chung, spokeswoman, No Tech For Apartheid

"[We carefully confirmed that] every single one of those whose employment was terminated was personally and definitively involved in disruptive activity inside our buildings."

Google response 

A sign for Google Cloud offices is seen in Sunnyvale, California, U.S. on April 16, 2024.

Nathan Frandino/Reuters

 

The mystery here is that employees of Google and those purporting to represent their interests feel entitled to job security even while they engage in disruptive, company-harmful, and clearly political activities and although the company does not agree with their contentious demands and has repeatedly asked them to desist in their actions, also feel entitled to continue regardless. Imposing their views on the company despite their views running counter to Google's business interests and perhaps their sympathies. 

 

Private companies have every right to have on their workforce employees who value their jobs enough to respect the company they work for.

Chief executive Sundar Pichae informed Google employees through a company-wide memorandum that they should not use the company as a "personal platform" or "fight over disruptive issues or debate politics." In other words, a reasonable caution. Those who chose to ignore his instructions to employees made the choice between employment and job loss. And job loss is precisely what at least fifty people working for the giant company have experienced, deservedly.

At least twenty additional workers were fired by Google resulting from their protests over the technology being supplied to the Israeli government. That brings the total to date of terminated staff to over fifty. The latest episode of internal turmoil at the tech giant revolving around a $1.2-billion contract signed in 2021 for Google and Amazon to provide the government of Israel with cloud computing and artificial intelligence services for "Project Nimbus".

These were workers who felt justified by their personal moral compass to hold sit-in protests at Google offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California. The response of the company when employees chose to ignore their requests to desist, was to call police who thereupon made appropriate arrests. Last week the company fired 30 workers and followed it up a day ago by firing "over 20" more staffers, "including non-participating bystanders during last week's protests", according to a spokesperson for No Tech For Apartheid.

Google's explanation was that additional workers were fired following its investigation that gathered details from co-workers who had been "physically disrupted", identifying employees who wore masks and failed to carry their staff badges, in an effort to shield their identities.

"This is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics." "[Google has a] duty to be an objective and trusted provider of information that serves all of our users globally,"

"[Workers should put disruption aside and put the] mission first [at this critically important time]."

"When we come to work, our goal is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. That supersedes everything else and I expect us to act with a focus that reflects that."

Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai

A person rides past the Google sign outside the Google offices in Sunnyvale, Calif., on Thursday, April 18, 2024. Google has fired 28 employees who were involved in protests over the tech company’s cloud computing contract with the Israeli government. The workers held sit-ins at the company’s offices in California and New York over Google’s $1.2 billion contract to provide custom tools for Israeli’s military. (AP Photo/Terry Chea)