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Their story has picked up where the US campus protests left off.
Google’s HR people are presumably too worldly to have thought sacking more than 50 workers for protesting against a contract between the company and Israel’s government would put an end to it. Sure enough, the workers have filed a complaint with the US National Labour Relations board.
The company finds itself a lightning rod for anti-Israeli anger that is unlikely to abate until the fighting stops. The complaint accuses Google of retaliating against the workers’ “protected concerted activity”.
The protest didn’t come from left field. Google workers are used to being heard by management on everything from police racism to working for the Pentagon. A few of them have been voicing opposition to the company’s $1.2 billion Project Nimbus contract to provide cloud services to Israel since it was signed in 2021.
The protesters fear Google could be helping Israel surveil Palestinians. Google says it does only mundane work for Israeli ministries.
Sundar Pichai, the Alphabet CEO, wrote to staff last November about their experience of antisemitism and Islamophobia since the October 7th attacks, but no action was taken against the pro-Palestinian protesters until 28 of them were summarily dismissed last month for physically impeding colleagues on their way into Google premises in New York and California.
At least 20 more have been fired since for behaviour deemed “completely unacceptable” and Pichai has implored his 180,000-strong workforce to leave their politics at home.
It’s not hard to concede that Google is under contract to Israel and the protesters’ ‘No Tech for Apartheid’ slogan is a reach – and at the same time to question the wisdom of sacking staff for speaking their minds. Couldn’t a business with a $108 billion cash pile use some of it for reconciliatory works outings?
