Google announced Thursday that it has laid off 28 employees after some of them took part in protests against the company's cloud contract with the Israeli government.
Alphabet's division said a small number of protesting employees broke into several unspecified offices and disrupted operations.
“Physically interfering with the work of other employees or preventing access to our facilities is a clear violation of our policies and is completely unacceptable behavior,” the company said in a statement. Stated.
Google announced that it has closed the separate investigation that resulted in the firing of 28 employees and will continue to investigate and take action as necessary.
The company separately announced Wednesday that it would lay off an unspecified number of employees, following a wave of layoffs this year at Google and across the technology and media industry.
“It's a blatant act of retaliation,'' some workers say.
In a statement posted on Medium, Google employees with the No Technology for Apartheid movement called this a “blatant act of retaliation” and said some employees who did not directly participate in Tuesday's protest. Google also said it was among the employees it laid off.
“Google employees have the right to peacefully protest about their working conditions,” the statement added.
CBC News has reached out to Google for further comment.
Protesters have argued that Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract awarded to Google and Amazon.com in 2021 to provide cloud services to the Israeli government, will help the Israeli government develop military tools. It is claimed that
Google insisted in a statement that the Nimbus contract “is not intended for highly sensitive classified or military workloads related to weapons or intelligence.”
Protests at Google are not new. In 2018, employees successfully pressured the company to shelve Project Maven, a contract with the U.S. military to analyze drone imagery for potential war applications. .
