Google on Wednesday fired 28 workers after dozens of employees participated in sit-ins at the company’s New York and Sunnyvale, Calif., offices to protest the company’s cloud computing contract with the Israeli government.
Google recently fired an employee who disrupted an Israeli technology conference in New York.
In Sunnyvale, employees refused to leave the office of Thomas Kurian, the chief executive of Google Cloud.
Google employees affiliated with the group that organized the sit-ins, called No Tech For Apartheid, said in a statement that the firings were “a flagrant act of retaliation.” “Google workers have the right to peacefully protest about terms and conditions of our labor,” the employees said.
They added that some of the employees Google fired had not participated in the sit-ins.
The Nimbus contract, announced in 2021, was to supply various Israeli government ministries with cloud software.
Since the contract’s inception, some Google employees have expressed concern that the company was aiding Israel’s military.
A Google spokeswoman said that Nimbus “is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.”
Following several staff members’ sit-ins at the company’s Sunnyvale, California and New York locations, Google on Wednesday fired 28 employees. offices to voice opposition to the business’s cloud computing agreement with the Israeli government.
Nine workers were taken into custody one day prior for allegedly breaking into the two offices.
A Google representative said in a statement, “Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior.”.
Long before the firings, hostilities had been building between the management of the company and a few dissident workers over Project Nimbus, a $1.22 billion agreement between Google and Amazon to provide cloud services, including artificial intelligence, to the Israeli government.
Since the start of the Gaza War in October, this division has grown more intense. An employee of Google was recently let go for interfering with an Israeli technology conference held in New York. Plus, because workers were fighting over the dispute, the company is even planning to modify a corporate forum.
Google declared that it will carry out more research into the protests on Tuesday. Employees in Sunnyvale, California, would not leave Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s office.
The firings were described as “a flagrant act of retaliation” by Google employees connected to the No Tech For Apartheid organization, which led the sit-ins. “.
The employees declared, “We at Google have the right to peacefully protest about the terms and conditions of our labor.”. They also mentioned that a few of the workers that Google let go had not taken part in the sit-ins.
The 2021 announcement of the Nimbus contract involved the provision of cloud software to multiple ministries within the Israeli government. Some Google employees have voiced concerns that the company is supporting the Israeli military ever since the contract was first established.
According to an official from Google, Nimbus “is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.”. “.
