After protesters took over Google’s corporate offices in New York, Seattle, and Sunnyvale, California, on April 16, staging sit-ins for 10 hours, the company fired 28 workers the following day. This week, they fired more people following investigations into the incidents.
According to “No Tech for Apartheid,” an activist campaign led by tech workers behind the protests, a total of 50 Google employees have now been fired by the company over the sit-ins.
No Tech for Apartheid claimed in a blog post that some of the Google workers fired were “non-participating bystanders during last week’s protests.”
On Tuesday, Google confirmed in a statement to FOX Business that the company had fired more workers connected to the demonstrations, affirming that those fired were participants.
“We continue our investigation into physical disturbances within our buildings on April 16, reviewing additional details provided by physically disrupted colleagues, as well as employees who took longer to identify due to partially concealed identities—such as wearing masks without their badges—while engaging in disruptions,” a Google spokesperson said.
“Our investigation into these events has now concluded, and we have terminated employment with additional employees who were found to be directly involved in disruptive activities,” the statement continued. “To reiterate, everyone who was terminated for their employment was personally and definitively involved in disruptive activities within our buildings. We carefully confirmed and reconfirmed this.”
Several demonstrators were arrested after the sit-ins on April 16, after they occupied the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurianto to read out their list of demands, including for Google to sever all ties with Israel and cancel Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract to provide cloud computing and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli government.
No Tech for Apartheid claimed that the Israeli military would use Google technology for “genocidal purposes.”
Google has denied that its Nimbus project aids Israel with weapons or intelligence services, and the demonstrators acknowledged that there is no evidence that Project Nimbus is used against civilian populations in Gaza.
Following the protests and the first round of firings, Google CEO Sundar Pichai addressed the issue in a message to remaining employees, clearly stating that such disruptions would not be tolerated.
“We have a lively and open culture of discussion that allows us to create outstanding products and turn great ideas into action. That’s important to maintain,” Pichai wrote. “But ultimately, we are a workplace, and our policies and expectations are clear: this is business, and not a place to act disruptively towards coworkers or make them feel unsafe, to try to use the company as a personal platform, or to argue over divisive issues or debate politics.”
