On November 22nd, roughly 200 Google employees and supporters rallied to protest the suspension of two colleagues, Rebecca Rivers and Laurence Berland, for allegedly accessing internal information they shouldn’t have in the course of their worker activism. Now, it appears Google has fired both those workers, as well as two other employees who participated in the rally.
Bloomberg reports that Google sent out a company-wide memo today confirming that it had fired four employees for “clear and repeated violations of our data security policies,” saying those workers “were involved in systematic searches for other employees’ materials and work,” continued to do so after warnings, and leaked some of that information outside the company. Google confirmed to Bloomberg and The Verge that the memo was legitimate.
In response, the 2018 Google Walkout organizers group is accusing the company of “union busting,” claiming in a blog post on Medium that the company is illegally retaliating against prospective union organizers like Rivers and Berland, and changing its policies to let it fire whomever it chooses, when it previously allowed employees to freely access documents from across the company. The Google Walkout group claims that all four employees fired today participated in the November 22nd rally.
The Tech Workers Coalition has spoken out against the firings as well. The workers are being called “the Thanksgiving Four”:
Rivers reportedly organized Google workers to protest the company doing business with US Customs and Border Protection.
Rivers confirmed on Twitter that she’d been terminated; Berlin’s didn’t immediately respond to our request for comment. It’s not clear who the other two staffers are, or whether another staffer reportedly fired on November 12th was among the four who had been dismissed. (That seems likely, but perhaps it’s five employees in total). When we asked Google to confirm or deny the Walkout organizers’ claims, Google declined to comment.
Tensions have seemingly been high inside Google for many months as tech workers found they have the power to protest such things as reports of sexual harassment, a censored Chinese search engine, and a controversial AI drone program for the Pentagon. Some 20,000 Google employees staged a walkout last November to protest sexual misconduct by Google executives, most recently leading to an investigation by the company’s board.
But one way or another, Google seems to be pushing employee organizers out of the company: Claire Stapleton and Meredith Whittaker, two organizers of that Google Walkout, alleged that they’d been retaliated against by company management, and wound up leaving in June and July respectively. Some employees participated in a sit-in to protest against that alleged retaliation, and walkout organizers demanded that Google investigate its own HR department. In September, Google reached a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board that required it to clarify that its policies “do not prevent employees from discussing workplace issues.”
The New York Times reported last week that Google has hired a consulting firm known for helping companies crack down against employee dissent, one that explicitly advertises “union vulnerability assessments” among other services.
Update, 10:54PM ET: Added that Google declined to comment on the organizers claims, but did confirm its own memo.
Comments
There seems to be the perception amongst internal employees that Google is still a dot-com. That it believes in the little guy and everything they do is for the greater good of humanity.
Fight oppression! Oppose the big evil Communist governments! Freedom of expression and most importantly freedom to make whatever products we think are cool, and even better if some stick around for a few years!
But what these workers are seeming to forget is that at the end of the day, they work for an advertising company which pushes ads in the Internet space. Yes their products may be banned from China, but that hasn’t stopped Google from trying to see if they could still make inroads with Project Dragonfly.
This is in the end a corporation and will do what corporations do. HR is there to protect the greater interests of the company, not the employee. But the by far greater sin(if you will), is that these protesters seem to be under the mistaken impression that working for Google represents some form of deep self-expression.
It is not. Talk to any software engineer who’s worked for them before, and moved on after the average of ~3.5 years. Google is not the end-all be-all of your career. It, like any other big tech company, is merely a career transition for you. You aggressively seek out, and work on high-profile projects, and move on soon as your resume looks padded enough.
You do not sit around and work on bug fix after bug fix. You do not treat each day as just another day at work. It’s a means to an end. And these people have gotten too far into the Google hype and are now bitten because the values it’s displaying now don’t match the values it has sold its minions on.
By gommerthus on 11.25.19 10:12pm
What "little guy" you’re talking about? Since when government contracts became "anti little guy" thing?
By AndyProkhorov on 11.26.19 7:02am
The fact that Google is allowing this much protest and disruption to go on is amazing. Most normal companies would fire anyone that was disrupting the business process. Companies are there to make money. They’re not a college club. It’s fine to protest, but doing so on company time using company resources should not be an expectation.
By Casin on 11.25.19 10:23pm
This take is disgusting. Employees are not slaves to be driven by management, but rather workers that have a right to protest what their energies are directed towards.
By TechStressesMeOutButILoveIT on 11.26.19 12:08am
Dude, they’re not "slaves." They’re employees of a tech / advertising company and certainly welcome and free to choose another line of employment or company, nonprofit, organization, etc.
By Javier Tremblay on 11.26.19 7:05am
The employees are also free to set limits to what they’ll do. They are doing the work, after all. If the employer is unhappy and can afford firing everybody, they’re also free to do so.
IMO, Google probably didn’t fire everybody and replace them simply because it can’t. There aren’t that many professionals available in the market to quickly replace an entire workforce. More importantly, they need other professionals and time to retrain these new replacements to use Google’s internal tools and get them used to the code base.
By denismr on 11.26.19 10:55am
They sure no slaves. What means they can leave at any time. Not being a slave doesn’t mean they have a right to dictate their employer what it can or cannot do. The employer doesn’t own them but they don’t own it either, it’s a completely voluntary relationship.
By AndyProkhorov on 11.26.19 7:08am
No it isn’t. No company exists in a vacuum. Maybe the state should close down all the streets leading to any google office. The state can, there isn’t anything in the law that says otherwise. God, you guys are brainwashed.
By Stelsewhere on 11.26.19 4:50pm
Comparing a person who works voluntarily and gets paid extremely well for it to a "slave" is disgusting.
By lorrenz on 11.26.19 8:42am
Seriously! These are some of the best paid jobs in the world with the best perks in the world and an incredible amount of freedom. To even think about comparing them to slavery betrays a seriously warped worldview. It’s offensive, frankly, and it saddens me that so many people are sympathetic to this ridiculous hyperbole.
By modeless on 11.26.19 3:31pm
Lorenz said:
"Comparing a person who works voluntarily and gets paid extremely well for it to a "slave" is disgusting."
Actually, anyone who calls them "slaves" is knowingly lying. Make no bones about it.
By AmarokAtari on 11.27.19 1:40pm
Wow. Some of the best paid jobs in the country are now considered slave labor.Workers can always leave. The idea that companies should put up with employees working against the company is staggering. That is not how the world works.
By Scott in GA on 11.26.19 11:57am
Scott, according to those here, the word "slave" has become devoid of meaning, and has come to mean "anyone who earns less than [insert arbitrary very high wage figure here]"
By AmarokAtari on 11.29.19 9:10am
They have the right to quit if they don’t agree with the company’s direction, hence they are in no way slaves, who, by definition, are compelled to work.
A company hires and agrees to pay an employee to work as directed by the company. These employees are actively working against the company. If you force the company to continue to pay them when they aren’t fulfilling the contract they have made for employment, you are enslaving the company.
Your take is ridiculous.
By Ms. Kwotr on 11.26.19 1:42pm
It’s a very US of A point of view.
It’s debattable at length. I do love to be in a country were corporations don’t hold all the rights and people can go on strike (unpaid of course) against foul policies on company time.
Sure it’s annoying, but it’s a price I’m willing to pay. Quality of life for the majorities is more important than making money for the sake of money (and only for a very selected few).
By lossendae on 11.26.19 1:43pm
Not being allowed to do whatever you want while you’re getting paid is "slavery" to you?
By daxus on 11.26.19 11:24pm
I would have hoped 19th century capitalism is dead and buried.
By Zizy on 11.26.19 4:11am
Nope, still a lot of boots that need to be licked apparently.
By Stone Cold Dan Quinn on 11.26.19 1:31pm
This has nothing to do with the 19th century. Or capitalism, for that matter. Just as a homeowner has the right to eject a guest who screams and smashes plates, business can eject bad employees.
By AmarokAtari on 11.27.19 8:14am
You know nothing. Employees have an absolute right on the companies dime to try organize an union. Google employees need a union. I am a lawyer, not your lawyer, and not giving legal advise.
By Stelsewhere on 11.26.19 4:47pm
If your bottom line would evaporate if you have to support unionized workers you shouldn’t be in business.
By Holmeser on 11.25.19 11:09pm
Companies don’t want a substantial increase in overhead. Many can make due, but they don’t want it.
By TheCallWasPerfect on 11.25.19 11:37pm
The Call: Exactly. Companies don’t want union thugs robbing their workers, and companies don’t want distant unqualified individuals like Richard Trumka making basic management decisions like a bull in a china shop.
Workers don’t want this either, so the vast majority reject unions entirely.
By AmarokAtari on 11.27.19 8:24am
Holmes. supporting campaign finance schemes such as unions doesn’t have, and shouldn’t have anything to do with whether or not a company should be in business. Your statement would have the majority of companies fire everyone and go out of business.
By AmarokAtari on 11.27.19 8:22am
Good! Any employee that continues to breach security protocols and place their employer, as well as their colleagues, at risk needs to be dismissed immediately!
By DMP89145 on 11.25.19 11:30pm