Google Walkout Organizers Say They're Facing Retaliation

https://www.wired.com/story/google-walkout-organizers-say-theyre-facing-retaliation/

by longdefeat • 7 years ago

333 224 7 years ago

rmbryan3• 7 years ago

I apologize if this is a naive question, but didn't they expect to get fired? I certainly would, if I started publicly protesting my employer.

compiler-guy• 7 years ago

Protected activities are protected. You'll notice from the text of that article that some of the retaliation stopped once a lawyer got involved.

java-man• 7 years ago

I am sure they'll be moved to a different project and then subsequently fired for "performance reasons".

hnal943• 7 years ago

There are lots of reasons the involvement of lawyers could slow things down. That doesn't mean that Google was behaving illegally.

Jasper_6• 7 years ago

Not only is it a terribly bad look, retaliation against workers organizing is against the law.

EDIT: Since people don't believe me: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/retaliation.cfm

turc16565• 7 years ago

That law protects against retaliation only against certain protected actions by the employees. Nothing these Google employees did is even close to being on that list. The Google employees simply didn't like what their company was doing and decided to take a very public action against it. There is nothing protected about that at all, whatsoever. I don't even think it would be covered if they were unionized.

gojomo2• 7 years ago

You link only pertains to "asserting their rights to be free from employment discrimination including harassment", and none of the example bullet points cover a mass walk-out, or organizing/encouraging fellow employees to stop doing their jobs.

I suspect you're still right on the law due to other provisions - it's just that link, and section of the law, doesn't obviously cover what happened at Google. You can "communicate", and resist specific discriminatory/harassing actions, without stopping all other legitimate work for speeches & sign-carrying.

oh_sigh• 7 years ago

This wasn't 'workers organizing' though, was it? I mean, the workers organized in order to protest this ethics board, but they wouldn't be punished for the organizing, but for publicly shitting on a company product?

If I work for a car company, and we come out with a car, and I go on record saying how crappy the car is and how no one should buy it - would that be a protected activity?

idlewords5• 7 years ago

Broadly speaking, it's illegal to fire or otherwise punish people for this kind of concerted workplace action, under the Wagner Act. This is the cornerstone of US labor law.

It's important to point out that you can get fired for protesting alone. But once you start organizing, you unlock a lot of legal protections.

rmbryan3• 7 years ago

Thank you! TIL, etc...

ummonk• 7 years ago

It's important to point out that you can get fired for protesting alone.

In California, where many of these workers are located, there are additional protections that might cover this.

jseliger• 7 years ago

This reminds me of a recent conversation with Tyler Cowen and Jordan Peterson: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-jord...:

COWEN: If we turn to senior management of large American companies, as a class of people — and I know it’s hard to generalize — but what do you see them as just not getting?

PETERSON: I would caution them not to underestimate the danger of their human resources departments.

COWEN: Say more.

PETERSON: Yeah, well, because I see that the social justice etiology that’s destroyed a huge swath of academia is on the march in a major way through corporate America. And if the corporate people think they’re immune to it, they’ve got another think coming. It’s not like they’re any smarter than the universities.

COWEN: And who gave the HR department so much power? How did that happen? What myth did we follow that led us wrong?

PETERSON: That’s a good question because they had virtually no power to begin with, right? HR departments have always been underpowered, so to speak.

If Google is still mostly focused on writing software and building the future, rather than prosecuting culture wars, that strikes me as a slight but real positive sign.

jrochkind1• 7 years ago

Firing people for organizing is in fact taking part in a war. It's just the wrong side of the battle, which you may prefer.

rat87• 7 years ago

PETERSON: Yeah, well, because I see that the social justice etiology (sic.) that’s destroyed a huge swath of academia is on the march in a major way through corporate America. And if the corporate people think they’re immune to it, they’ve got another think coming. It’s not like they’re any smarter than the universities.

I've heard that Peterson was spreading worthless claptrap, but am still a little suprised.

If Google is still mostly focused on writing software and building the future, rather than prosecuting culture wars

Thankfully, Google has stayed away from Peterson

rmbryan3• 7 years ago

Okay, again, I'm uninformed: How is anyone supposed to establish WHY a company does something? The rule says, "For example, depending on the facts, it could be retaliation if an employer acts because of the employee's EEO activity to..."

The word because bewilders me here. Who knows why anyone does anything? I don't know why I do 90% of what I do. If someone accused me of having tuna for lunch because of someone's EEO activity, how could I possibly prove they were wrong?

Jasper_6• 7 years ago

When you run a multi-billion dollar company, you need to know why you do 90% of what you do. If you don't, you can talk about it with people called "lawyers" who can tell you whether it's a good idea or a bad one before you do it.

They demoted two employees who were highly performing, weren't told otherwise, but coincidentally highly instrumental in organizing and staging protests. Doesn't take a genius to figure out why they were forcibly transferred.

tartuffe78• 7 years ago

I would guess it would go like this: 1. Fired employee sues employer 2. During discovery, fire employees lawyer requests all documentation/emails/performance reviews for employee 3. Lawyer tries to show proof there was no other reason for the firing.

lmkg• 7 years ago

The same way that you "prove" anything in the legal system: Present your case in front of a jury, while your opponent has the chance to rebut your claims. Keep in mind that the legal standard for civil claims is "more likely than not," as opposed to the more famous "beyond a shadow of a doubt" standard that is used for criminal cases.

So, you'll go up at trail and present a bunch of data points, and build a narrative around those data points. Look, you say, I had good reviews from my managers and glowing recommendations from my co-workers. Despite this, I was fired shortly after I Did A Thing. Is this a coincidence or retaliatory? Your employer would attempt to provide evidence that your work quality actually dropped off, you would attempt to present evidence that either the quality stayed the same, or else that goalposts were moved for no good reason.

Note that both parties have the ability to compel various types of evidence to be produced. You would be able to subpeona the employer for emails between bosses, or manager notes, or reviews and such. You could be able to compel people to testify around a variety of facts.

... if this process sounds rather onerous, now you know why trials take a long time and many parties prefer to settle privately rather than engage in the full court process.

pmoriarty• 7 years ago

"How is anyone supposed to establish WHY a company does something?"

There could be an email trail, or testimony from witnesses to conversations in which the motivations were discussed. That's direct evidence.

There could also be indirect evidence, for example, if there was a pattern of firing employees directly after they participated in protected activities.

dekhn4• 7 years ago

often there is a paper trail. When IBM fires a lot of old people, they make sure to have 6 months of negative performance reviews. Google's way is to make it hard to work on the projects you enjoy working on so it eventually becomes less painful to just leave.

DanBC• 7 years ago

How is anyone supposed to establish WHY a company does something?

Courts deal with mens rea and actus rea every day. They look at the evidence and see if it meets the burden of proof.

mtgx• 7 years ago

I certainly would, if I started publicly protesting my employer.

I'm sure most Europeans here would agree that this is a very sad statement.

neilv• 7 years ago

I'd assume that most of them didn't expect much/any disfavor.

Wild guess is that Google internal culture has more "we're the good guys" beliefs among employees than many other companies. And, at least in the past, Google officially supported Don't Be Evil.

If so, that good-guy identification might be self-fulfilling to some degree, in the people who are attracted disproportionately, and in reinforcement from an atmosphere of many people identifying that way.

Continuing the wild guessing, it's possible that people think Google is a safer place to speak up than many other places.

And especially in the age of 'social media', we have blurred ideas of where the line is, between collegial dialogue and public performance. Also, a single person's blurred ideas about that can turn something that was internal for everyone else, into public for everyone else.

Though, in general, if people feel they have to go public about an issue (assuming it's genuine by everyone, not a self-regulation/PR stunt, nor politician-style individual career-building by some)... that seems to suggest that they don't have sufficient influence and trust internally, without putting the organization on the spot publicly. If you don't trust your colleagues/management to do the right thing, or you still don't have influence, I'd say that's not a place you want to be. If the idea of walking away sounds bad, consider whether you actually can find influence and trust within the organization. (And let the rest of us know where you eventually find influence&trust, because that can be hard to find.)

TheCoelacanth2• 7 years ago

They probably did expect Google to illegally fire them, but they would be morons not to publicize that Google illegally fired them.

grecy• 7 years ago

but didn't they expect to get fired? I certainly would, if I started publicly protesting my employer

What a sad state of affairs when workers in the supposed 'greatest country on earth' feel that way.

JustSomeNobody• 7 years ago

Of course they did. That's one of the points to doing it. They also expected to fight the consequences.

idlewords5• 7 years ago

Retaliation, while miserable for the people experiencing it, would be a positive sign that this kind of protest is having an effect.

hnaccy• 7 years ago

Google has a culture of retaliation, which too often works to silence women, people of color, and gender minorities

Are there more stories on this?

anon12345690• 7 years ago

no because its not true.

sverige6• 7 years ago

Meredith Whittaker, who leads Google’s Open Research, said that after Google disbanded its external AI ethics council on April 4, she was told that her role would be “changed dramatically.” Whittaker said she was told that, in order to stay at the company, she would have to “abandon” her work on AI ethics and her role at AI Now Institute, a research center she cofounded at New York University.

I don't understand why a person who organized the pressure group that led to Google disbanding their AI ethics group would expect her role not to change, since she's involved in AI ethics, the very thing she helped sink. She helped make it politically toxic and a PR disaster for her own employer.

I'm no fan of Google, but they tried to organize something to satisfy a politically diverse group of stakeholders to at least have a discussion on this topic, only to have their efforts very publicly sabotaged by one of their own. Are they really obligated to continue to fund the work she's done to harm the company?

ahelwer4• 7 years ago

They didn't try to do that, though. They tried to organize a group of people who largely (although not exclusively) knew nothing about AI, or ethics, to rubber-stamp their actions and assuage the concerns of regulators & watchdogs. Ethics laundering, basically.

sverige6• 7 years ago

That's a really huge assumption, considering they never met (afaict), let alone deliberated anything or issued recommendations. Google sought input from outside their bubble and those inside the bubble immediately protested based on identity politics.

There are a lot more people outside the bubble than inside, and this action makes it seem like Google doesn't give a shit what they think. It's the sort of thing that makes heavy regulation appealing even for those who normally would oppose regulation on principle.

How does that benefit Google?

3xblah• 7 years ago

That is what someone should be protesting, isn't it?

Perhaps the easiest way to help the world avoid the potential problems created by the Google's work is not to work for Google?

These protesting employees, whatever the cause du jour, are all in a compromised position. They need/want their jobs at Google. They cannot effectively function as internal watchdogs and regulators. They are not representative of the wider affected population; we do not elect them.

Neither Google nor Facebook can be relied on to "regulate itself", whether it comes from top-down decision-making or in response to internal protests.

serioussecurity5• 7 years ago

Yes they are. It's called "protected concerted activity" and it's protected under the national labor relations act.

These laws were passed because they were seen as better than the status quo, which was employers firebombing their employees or highering mecenaries to shoot them.

sverige6• 7 years ago

Google telling Whittaker that they don't want her doing work on AI ethics after she torpedoed their first effort to have a public discussion is not even close to firebombing her or hiring mercenaries to shoot her. Nor was she engaged in trying to form an employees' union, which I think is the activity protected by the NLRA.

They didn't even fire her. Apparently they just said, We don't want you involved in the AI ethics discussion going forward. That seems reasonable, considering her past efforts in that area have not benefited Google in any way, but rather harmed them.

Just as employers can't firebomb their employees for organizing, employees can't bury steel spikes in logs headed for the sawmill.

taneq• 7 years ago

the status quo, which was employers firebombing their employees or highering mecenaries to shoot them

Did we not, uh, already have laws against firebombing or hiring hitpersons? I would have thought these kinds of rights-to-collective-action laws are more about employers just summarily sacking people who do things that they're legally entitled to do but that are politically disadvantageous to their employers.

aaronlifshin• 7 years ago

Whittaker organized a walkout to protest the way that allegations of sexual assault were mishandled. Is there evidence that she also organized the petition related to the external AI ethics group in Google?

sverige6• 7 years ago

She was active in organizing the petition drive that successfully pressured Google to keep Kay Coles James off the committee. [0] [1] [2] [3] [4]

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/01/google-ka...

[1] https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/04/google-employees-call-on-...

[2] https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/04/leftist-googlers-kay-cole...

[3] https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/05/google-drops-heritage-fou...

[4] https://www.newstarget.com/2019-04-06-leaked-emails-suggest-...

ninedays• 7 years ago

Being asked to abandon a current role is way different than Google deciding to remove said positions. It's the same difference between leaving the company and being fired. Even though in both ways you're not in the company anymore, how it was done is an important factor. Google is basically asking the employee to resign instead of telling her that her position has been removed.

r22153• 7 years ago

Because she is a prominent female scientist, and she’s proven to be mentally competent to handle this s-storm in an admirable way. It’s a horrible look.

ocdtrekkie3• 7 years ago

Beyond being not remotely surprised at this, what constantly baffles me is: Why are they still there? And pending an answer to that: Why have they not walked out again?

Presumably the Walkout was a "fix this or we walk out" type of situation... but after Google refused to do 6/7ths of anything they demanded... they're still working for Google and not actively protesting. I would argue that Google called their bluff here.

A traditional protest against an employer, a strike, entails "give us this if you want us to return to work". Googlers walked out, made demands, and then walked right back in the door. Google said "we'll do one of the things you asked for because the rest of the industry was already going that way anyhow", and then refused the rest and everyone, for the moment, seems alright with this?

blihp• 7 years ago

Because they expect to be able to have their cake and eat it too.

onetimemanytime• 7 years ago

>what constantly baffles me is: Why are they still there?

Money. But if you ask them..."we're trying to chance the system from inside blah blah blah..." Google is not gonna forget all the bad press.

icelancer• 7 years ago

There's little to no conviction behind most of these types of protests and employers know it. People have too much to lose. Especially Google employees who make a lot of money and likely have lifestyles that depend on said money.

xyzzyz• 7 years ago

And it's harder to get a job elsewhere, if your name is plastered all over the media, which say that you were organizing against your employer.

njepa2• 7 years ago

Seems unlikely that they would, or even would think they would be able to, go on strike as that requires resources beyond what most tech workers have access to.

kylek• 7 years ago

I'm wondering this too. A walkout might make sense if google was the only game in now. Clearly that's not the case - these are "smart" people with loads of options. Just quit if you actually mean business. Strange to expect to keep a FAANG salary and not do the "dirty" work.

MichaelGlass• 7 years ago

Easy to say from the sidelines. Working at google means

- getting better benefits & pay

- being at one of the darling companies in the industry

Walking out is daring. Leaving is even scarier. I remember leaving my last job thinking, "I'll never work with as talented people." I was wrong, but it was a legitimate fear.

jammygit4• 7 years ago

After my internship I certainly have that fear. It seems unreal that there could be a bunch of other companies out there that have the same calibre of people

geodel• 7 years ago

If benefits/pay and intelligent colleagues is what really matters to protesters and they are not looking to cut down on luxe lifestyle that Google job affords them. In that case they are really bullshitting about ethical issues because they have no qualm in partaking money that Google generate by ethically dubious decisions.

losteric2• 7 years ago

This (my) generation has been culturally conditioned against the idea of quitting a job... peers in struggling circumstances create a feeling of looming "economic uncertainty", there's a perception that forcing issues against employers means getting blacklisted, and social media placing wealth over values.

It's also a disseminate problem. Striking against long working hours is easy. Striking against corporate values that enable seemingly distant problems (surveillance states) while working on a friendly low-stress high-pay team... that's hard. Unless you actually care.

Maybe some people are learning they don't actually care... that their "values" were just shallow social posturing, worth less than their stable high-income...

Hopefully, though, some also realize tech is one of the few areas where workers still truly have the freedom to actually demand an ethical employer - which may involve looking elsewhere. Follow-through is always scary, but no worse than uprooting our lives moving to college and then again moving to big-tech cities.

ocdtrekkie3• 7 years ago

Sure, but I mean, if you have Google on your resume, you can work pretty close to anywhere, and a lot of other tech companies will pay competitively for you, right down the street. People should never just... quit without a plan, but six months later, it's hard to imagine that anyone who wanted to leave couldn't have found a new job by now if they were actively looking.

ambulancechaser• 7 years ago

This reads very strangely to me.

This (my) generation has been culturally conditioned against the idea of quitting a job

This is a super bizarre claim. Wealthy Googlers are afraid to quit their job because of their peers who make a fraction of their pay? We're talking about Silicon Valley workers and somehow they are more afraid to quit their job than the previous generations? A common job strategy is to change jobs every two to three years.

serioussecurity5• 7 years ago

It's called "protected concerted activity". It is protected under the national labor relations act. These laws were passed in the context of mine owners hiring armed mecenaries (the pinkertons for example) to break up strikes.

serioussecurity5• 7 years ago

jammygit4• 7 years ago

Microsoft employees tried to stand up against military contracts but got nowhere. If google does listen at all, eg with dragonfly, that's not nothing.

socrates1998• 7 years ago

This is just all so weird.

If google is such a bad company, then quit working for them.

It's not really a protest, it's a tactic to wrestle control over the company and win social points with their "victory".

They want the social status of having protested something, yet with zero of the fallout.

They still collect google paychecks, collect google 401k money, still have google health insurance AND want to be able to say they "stuck it to the man"

It's just so odd all the way around.

They had a google walkout, then google didn't change anything, then the protesters went back to work.

It was all just a stunt.

ahelwer4• 7 years ago

Why does this exact same objection come up again and again? Why do we have to leave our companies instead of trying to make positive change from within? Why is the only prescribed solution to take flight to new lands, like locusts, staying ahead of the flood? What do we do when there are no more companies to which to flee, and the effects of that which we are fleeing is harming society?

ska2• 7 years ago

It's a another version of the argument "If you don't like our country behaving the way I think it should behave, you should leave the country".

Absolutely sometimes the best thing for an individual to do is take their marbles and go home. But equally, sometimes the best thing to do is put your shoulder to pushing the wheels in [what you perceive as] a better direction. Companies (and countries) after all are not stand-alone entities; they are an expression of their constituent parts. Some of this is history/momentum, but a lot of it is just people.

[edit] of course I think the bar for "when should I leave my company" is an awful lot lower than "when should I leave my country".

sturgill3• 7 years ago

My very short opinion on this: politics is the process of working within a system; protesting is the process of removing oneself _from_ the system. The story of the Civil Rights protests would have been very different had African Americans continued to ride the bus.

There’s a place for both, but I’m not sure there’s a lot of overlap. If you want to protest your boss, that’s fine. But I’d encourage you to have your resume up-to-date. Very few people take an activist role in a company and stay employed. But heated discussions and debate are a natural part of any board meeting.

doctorpangloss• 7 years ago

What do we do when there are no more companies to which to flee

A more interesting conversation for sure. There are lots of ways to make software besides companies. Lots of great software that got made before there was a corporate entity supporting it, even indirectly. Some great software written entirely in opposition to a corporate entity.

Don't obsess too narrowly on "GPL" or "open source" or whatever. A lot of software is artisanal, all the way from making websites to make firmwares for space devices, bought and sold on the digital equivalent of a fleamarket and not by the concentration of some corporate entity. Some software is bought/sold at auction, like government contracts.

No one is objecting to corporations generally. There's a reaction against (1) the conformity of it all and (2) the pedigree of the people who work there.

How do supposedly smart people, with their liberal arts and STEM educations, represent a shareholder group that is most likely going to treat the ordinary person unjustly?

For example, it's possible to research AI at universities. No one is going to pressure you into making target-acquisition image recognition or person-of-interest mass-surveillance tech at a university. But these are exactly the sorts of things Google was selling in its Maven contract. They want to sell fucking weapons dude.

We have this intuitive idea that a lot of people are okay with selling the weapons basically because the pay is really fucking good. The controversy is that the Northrup Grumman employees are the "other," and Google engineers were like soft kids from Ivy League schools who are friendly and nice and watch lots of animal videos and crack good jokes.

It just turns out they want money too sometimes, a lot of it. The line has finally been crossed where people have to either quit or shut up.

r00fus• 7 years ago

It's the same line as when people complain about the direction of politics and get a "well then move to a different country" response.

At least in politics you can vote. As a worker, you have very little control in direction of a large employer.

AntiTechTechie• 7 years ago

What do we do when there are no more companies to which to flee, and the effects of that which we are fleeing is harming society?

Start your own company...or destroy those that are trying to destroy you

bogomipz• 7 years ago

I certainly agree with the notion of trying to affect change from within but how viable is that at a company like Google? In looking at just the recent past for example we see sexual harassment mishandling, work on censorship-enabled search, Pentagon contracts, double Dutch tax avoidance schemes etc.

At some point don't you conclude that the distance between your own value system and that of the corporation you work is just too great?

thanatropism2• 7 years ago

Voice versus exit: this is pretty much an open question, but it's central to really-really discussing political change.

At the very least you need to be aware that those are options and not be surprised when someone argues that exit >> voice.

xj9• 7 years ago

if you want a say in the policies of your workplace, a traditional corporation isn't the kind of company you should be working for. you explicitly don't have a say unless the structure of the organization gives you that power, which is explicitly the case for cooperative corporations only.

if you want real change, start a cooperative.

tomohawk2• 7 years ago

A public protest is not advocating change from within.

Companies like Google encouraged a continuation of a college like atmosphere, but it is not college. It's a job. If you're not there to work and add value to the company, the what are you doing?

In college it may be ok to demonstrate against the EVIL THING, but work is not college. In college you're paying to be there. At work, you're getting paid to add value.

lazyasciiart2• 7 years ago

This comment seems to fall very far outside the principle of charity that HN requires from users.

RichardCA• 7 years ago

The general tone of moderation is to discourage a posture of shallow cynicism. In practice this is difficult to enforce because some level of reasonable discussion will always fall in the grey area and you don't want to appear heavy-handed.

serioussecurity5• 7 years ago

The history of labor is in this form of protest. Googlers are more comfortable than many others. The further down the chain you go the more precarious the workers and dependent on their pay checks, and the easier time management has retaliating.

This stuff is legally protected because before we had legal protections, conflicts devolved into straight out armed struggle, with employers hiring mercenaries (notably the pinkertons) to break up employee resistance with guns.

JeremyBanks2• 7 years ago

So your suggestion, if you see an injustice, is to leave, so that the situation is handled by people who don't recognize the injustice?

That'll help!

0x54D5• 7 years ago

What exactly is the injustice? AI being used for military applications?

Most of these AI algorithms are open source and available on Github for anyone to use. The military is still gonna have their big bad robot with a gun that can immediately identify enemy combatants as soon as it enters a room.

The genie is out of the bag.

andrei_says_• 7 years ago

Way to go framing people standing for what they believe in as a “stunt”. Apart from a frequent talking point aiming to discredit activists this POV also reveals a lack of understanding for any action which is either a strategy to enrich oneself or a hypocritical attempt to look good.

mkhalil• 7 years ago

"If google is such a bad company, then quit working for them."

Why not try to change what is Bad?

I could see this working for a small local coffee shop, but for something as big as Google where many employees could be replaced, and how it effects the lives of billions of people on the planet (and elsewhere), you not working there wouldn't bring any real net positive change.

If I hate Comcast and ATT and chose to ignore them for being Bad, I really wouldn't have broadband options. My municipality would be a good contender to start their own ISP, but are banned from doing so thanks to Comcast passing laws in my state (most states in US now), and the "system" for allowing them to pass said laws.

I am not going to just quit internet because I hate them, but I have and continue to try to hold them accountable and have them do better.

So as long as monolithic monopolies exist with the support of the many institutions set in place today, ignoring bad does no good.

effie• 7 years ago

you not working there wouldn't bring any real net positive change.

You do not know that. Perhaps them not working there deprives the corporation of their ideas and skills, and frees the person's time and energy for a work helping the positive change.

tamrix• 7 years ago

Sometimes it's better to be in the ship to steer it.

hprotagonist2• 7 years ago

If you do not know that this sort of thing is coming when you chose to stand up for what you think is right, you should.

Protest and civil disobedience come at an obligate personal cost. The only reasonable expectation you should have before doing it is that you're about to burn your world to the ground -- anything left standing you should count as a blessing and a relief.

In this case, for example, walkout organizers should've just assumed that they're going to be retaliated against, and that their protest didn't end the day of the walkout but will continue through the whole process of having a labor lawyer, fighting this in court, documenting their work lives for the next 5+ years, etc. It's part of the same action and part of the same protest.

In the long term and at a broader societal level, moral protests are usually worth it, but that does not mean that your shorter- and medium- term economic and personal social costs are going to be zero -- in fact, quite the opposite!

edit: i assume that the walkout organizers knew all this, but the above can totally be read as "oh those silly babes-in-the-woods googlers", which was not what i meant. If anything, I understand the linked post as just the next phase of the game, in which illegal retribution is disclosed as part of an ongoing legal fight.

ngcazz• 7 years ago

It's pretty absurd to think the authors didn't expect any kind of reprisal. No kind of organizing against an entity this size, especially with the visibility the walkout had, comes without a cost. And not reporting on the consequences would be handing over the victory to Google.

lenticular2• 7 years ago

This retaliation in response to anti-harassment protests is actually illegal. It's pretty obvious these actions were done before legal got involved: When Claire Stapleton had a lawyer contact Google they walked back the demotion.

hprotagonist2• 7 years ago

Sorry, it's entirely unclear from my post, but i assume the authors DID expect this to happen.

hjnilsson• 7 years ago

Well, they most likely did expect consequences. But regardless they need to make noise of it when it happens, else it would be a waste of attention.

This is just the way the world works. If you are opposed to something, you need to complain and make a buzz to get change over time. Even if in the moment it is both obvious and will make no difference.

dcole2929• 7 years ago

Who's saying they didn't expect that. Expected or not you still fight that tooth and nail and that's exactly what they are doing here. The work is not done but it's important that they not only organize and unite with other workers who are affected but that they do exactly as they have with this article and get word out to people outside of the organization they are fighting. The public can be a powerful weapon

throwaway20484• 7 years ago

Yep tons of people in the comments asking why they didn't just quit.

Quitting isn't going to change a damn thing.

algaeontoast• 7 years ago

Un-ironically there's an episode of SpongeBob that perfectly illustrates this. Where Squidward convinces SpongeBob to go on strike and once he's actually on strike is surprised and outraged when he realizes he's been fired.

stcredzero• 7 years ago

In this case, for example, walkout organizers should've just assumed that they're going to be retaliated against

Retaliation which isn't technically retaliation is just how crusty old Kafkaesque big companies have operated for years. I'll leave it up to the reader what this implies about Google.

In the long term and at a broader societal level, moral protests are usually worth it

Social media has created an environment where the bar is far too low for activism and protest, and unchecked opportunism in the name of activism is far too easy.

but that does not mean that your shorter- and medium- term economic and personal social costs are going to be zero -- in fact, quite the opposite!

Strange, but in 2019, there are quite a few people who have profited or otherwise have gained non-monetarily from online activism.

mindcrime3• 7 years ago

After escalating the issue to human resources, she said she faced further retaliation. “My manager started ignoring me, my work was given to other people, and I was told to go on medical leave, even though I’m not sick,” Stapleton wrote. After she hired a lawyer; the company conducted an investigation and seemed to reverse her demotion.

For the sake of argument, let's postulate that this is exactly what it sounds like: straight up retaliation. If so, here's the question in my mind:

What flipping moron thought that:

a. this was a good idea

b. they could get away with this

TBH, I'd say that IF Google management were that upset at this individual's actions, it would have made more sense to just straight up fire her, as opposed to this kind of childishness. NOT that I'm saying any of this justifies firing. Just saying that outright firing somebody you disagree with makes more sense than keeping them around and trying to fuck with them as, whatever, punishment I guess? That's braindead stupid as far as I can see.

And actually, (a) is the more serious question in many ways. Seriously, what did they think they would gain from this retaliation? Who wins in this scenario? Nobody, as far as I can tell.

ben_jones• 7 years ago

There's also a certain kind of gluttony to it. She's presumably making what, 200k+, if not way more? Their solution is just have her take medical leave so they don't have to deal with the "awkwardness" of working with her, where she will presumably continue making that money while doing zero work. It's just like, damn, what a nice company you got there.

azernik4• 7 years ago

Firing would have been even more provably retaliation; presumably they were hoping to reduce legal liability. Why they thought this would work is beyond me, since this kind of activity is also recognized by labor law as Totally Illegal.

One possibility - the people with power to fire her actually talked to their lawyers, while the people with the power to initiate this kind of harassment did not.

mindcrime3• 7 years ago

Firing would have been even more provably retaliation; presumably they were hoping to reduce legal liability.

Yes, but in some ways it would have been more honest. But the real question, still, is why do either? How does retaliating against this individual benefit Google? (Not that it would be justified even IF the answer was "Their stock will go up 3x as a result" or something).

It's just dumb from what I can see. It's almost like some manager was butt-hurt that somebody expressed their opinion and decided to try and fuck them over for no real reason. That manager is the one who ought to be fired.

jammygit4• 7 years ago

This doesn't sound like organized retaliation, but like a loyal and angry manager taking initiative and seeking retaliation. At least, as summarized. The company itself probably could have prevented it by having meetings about it ahead of time but may not have had a hand in it

kelnos3• 7 years ago

This doesn't sound like organized retaliation, but like a loyal and angry manager taking initiative and seeking retaliation.

The article also mentions that when she contacted HR and her VP, the situation got worse. So even if the initial act was that of a lone-wolf manager, the rest of the management chain supported and escalated the retaliation. That's organized enough for me.

throwawaysea4• 7 years ago

Employees that bring politics to work are making the workplace uncomfortable for everyone else who has a different (or perhaps a more nuanced-) opinion, but can't speak up. They are creating constant distractions that take away from the work at hand, especially when it forces others to drop their actual work and engage (either passively by reading/keeping-up or actively by spending effort getting involved). These disruptive outrages are largely irrelevant to the mission of the company except via generous stretches of logic. Those involved in workplace activism also often violate the confidentiality that is expected in the corporate context, leaking email threads and weaponizing manufactured outrage via social media or journalistic outlets against the company and dissenting employees. The dynamic that has been created is also often politically-biased (rather than neutral), particularly at large tech companies, because psychological safety is only afforded to those who align with a progressive far-left platform.

Let's be clear, most of the justification (and claims of protection) for recent employee activism relies on mental gymnastics. There is no standing, for example, for random Google employees to expect to be involved in the selection of members of an AI ethics panel or in the acceptance criteria for clientele. There is no standing for employees to be involved in most of the company's decisions. This is especially true for the relatively-junior employees who are often driving these protests, since they lack the experience/skillset/visibility to have any useful/comprehensive perspective on complex corporate decisions. It is immature for them to expect involvement or transparency on-demand, and to protest decisions they disagree with that are beyond their horizon. If these activists were truly honest, they would conduct petitions via anonymous voting mechanisms (e.g. internal surveys) that let all employees vote for/against/indifferent, so that a broad voice is heard and not just a skewed vocal minority that faces no consequence. But these same activists won't do that, since these protests are not at all about making the best decisions or being inclusive, but rather about power dynamics and trying to get one's own way.

Google has lots of standing to take action against these employees. If these employees don't want to work at Google, or don't display motivation around their core role/function, let them quit or fire them. If they are not performing their duties and are instead spending work time on personal agendas, fire them. If they are disrupting the workplace by constantly fomenting outrage on the Internet, fire them. If they are hurting the company's brand and working against the interests of the company (or shareholders) by engaging in self-serving political activism, fire them. If they disrespect and alienate most of their customer base by only advocating for their own worldview, fire them. All this should be uncontroversial - after all, many others will line up for those jobs and Google will be just fine.

Ar-Curunir• 7 years ago

You're entirely mistaken if you think your work is apolitical. These people aren't bringing politics to work; their work is bring politics to them.

throwawaysea4• 7 years ago

Work has a mission, which is to create value for customers and charge a price that creates income for the company (and transitively for shareholders, employees, etc.). The justification for saying "all work is political" is basically the same as saying "all actions have impacts". Sure, all actions do have direct and indirect impacts, but then we don't need a word like "politics" to exist in our dictionary do we? After all, if anything is political, what differentiates this word from other language we already have available to us? As such, I reject this notion that tries to position employee activism as being somehow similar to otherwise everyday corporate operation.

Expanding on this further: I think colloquially, most people would agree that certain actions are explicitly political and certain ones are not. I do not view Google taking on a military contract as a political action, but rather a normal, expected action for an entity that tries to create value for others. The neutral-most stance, if any, is for them to accept all willing clients. On the other hand, employees protesting because they disagree with the actions/impacts of one of Google's clients, or employees who disagree with a specific application of a technology (which others unrelated to them see value in), are bringing personal judgment, personal opinions, personal values, personal morality, and personal politics into the workplace.

The reason I label these as 'personal' is because these employees are imposing their worldview on the company's decision-making, and overriding the democratic/distributed nature of transactions taking place freely in the market between two consenting entities (the corporation and its clients). Those transactions are better and more-neutral measures of value than the voice of a small but vocal minority acting within the company. Effectively, such employee activism is a corruption of the notion of creating value for others (or others recognizing value in your products), and therefore not aligned to what the corporate mission is. Since it is not aligned to the corporate mission or the job the employees are paid to do, it is personal or political but definitely not normal or acceptable, which is why disciplinary action is justified.

malvosenior• 7 years ago

That these same employees once again have created a media firestorm for their employers shows that Google was correct in demoting them (I would have fired them). They run to Wired because their role changes and they "lose" direct reports? These are not people that you want in your workplace. They are creating a toxic environment and Google is sending the right message to those of us that would rather get work done than play activist on the company's dime and brand.

Jasper_6• 7 years ago

Yeah, agreed. Much better to keep the guy sexually harassing your employees, and fire the people complaining to HR about it. /s

malandrew• 7 years ago

they would conduct petitions via anonymous voting mechanisms (e.g. internal surveys) that let all employees vote for/against/indifferent, so that a broad voice is heard and not just a skewed vocal minority that faces no consequence.

This is exactly what I want from petitions, online or otherwise. "Sign this if you agree" is not a good way to figure out what is best for all compared to "Do you agree or disagree".

There are so many petitions I see where I disagree with the petition, but the petitions aren't designed to include dissenting voices. Honestly, as a society we should reject all petitions that don't leave room for the representation of dissenting views.

thanatropism2• 7 years ago

This opening sentence

Employees that bring politics to work are making the workplace uncomfortable for everyone else who has a different (or perhaps a more nuanced-) opinion, but can't speak up

is so important. The General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street paid some mind to it, but it's generally assumed that being apt and competent in forcefully communicating perceived issues is fully equivalent to having legitimate grievances and interests in the matters at stake.

This runs the spectrum from very shy/social anxiety/autism to has three kids/sick parents/too busy to worry about campus/homeowners' association/etc. politics.

yalogin• 7 years ago

This is a private company and more so the AI ethics and the context of the walkout is not really a criminal or civil violation in the eyes of the country. So the company is free to do anything it wants.

olefoo2• 7 years ago

This is a private company

Alphabet is a publicly traded company. Which means it is expected to uphold certain standards of behavior.

throw2016• 7 years ago

What these people are doing takes tremendous courage. Posts here over the last few months have many wondering why people in Facebook and Google are not speaking up and in this instance we have some genuine dissent, activism and protest at least on one issue.

But history shows dissenters are always a tiny minority, from the initial struggles that secured labour rights to equality for women. Most people will conform and fall in line for whatever reason, and in these cases there is unfortunately always resentment against the dissenters from those who fall in line.

In most other situations you would expect the early dissenters to get growing unequivocal support as more people find their compass and courage by example but there is a moral crisis in the software community and it looks these individuals may not get the widespread support they need.

But these kind of incidents will make it increasingly difficult for Google leadership and others who work there to go to events, meets and publicly talk about ethics and others issues these protestors raised.

namesbc• 7 years ago

Time for tech to unionize

rdtsc3• 7 years ago

There was just a story today about NPM employees trying that and getting fired. Tech companies are in this strange place where on the surface they are seemingly going above and beyond to be tolerant, and diverse. But it's mostly talk and gestures that doesn't involve making any hard decisions or spending much money. Try to mention "unionization" and that thin veneer drops and the ugliness come out immediately.

wnevets• 7 years ago

I'm surprised they weren't fired for publicly admitting they weren't doing their job.

AdamM122• 7 years ago

Maybe I missed it in the other comments but is anyone else uneasy about the idea of your coworkers having a town hall to tell their "stories"? Just seems ripe for unfounded accusations or cherry picked facts to basically defame a coworker.

rdtsc3• 7 years ago

is anyone else uneasy about the idea of your coworkers having a town hall to tell their "stories"?

Sometimes, ironically, I think they specifically set those up to flush out non-conformists, the naive, and the trouble-makers. Invite them to "share their thoughts" then start building black lists. I am only half joking there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign

AdamM122• 7 years ago

You better explain this than I.

OrgNet2• 7 years ago

They should all quit. Then donate six months to Mozilla and find a way to kill AMP.

OrgNet2• 7 years ago

This definition is interesting: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Spineless .

dmh2000• 7 years ago

are employee 'walkouts' a protected class? Like a union on strike?

tomohawk2• 7 years ago

Don't they teach people not to bring politics to work anymore?

Rule #1 at work: don't talk or engage in politics

KingMachiavelli• 7 years ago

The current relization is that you often cannot work without being political because your work in some way is political.

In this specific instance, organizing a walk out, does seem to go much farther than what you would expect your employer to tolerate. Typical people who work typical jobs are fired for far less so the real suprise in being told that your 'role' is changing is that you still have a job at all.

Ultimently, I have little faith in these kinds of demonstrations - perhaps it will work for FAANGS since they have a pretty somewhat limitied supply of talent/employees. But for the majority of the tech industry, I expect the ability to choose where you work and the ability to organize unions will be a much more effective means of employee influence.

consumer451• 7 years ago

In this case it was Google who brought politics into the office. I don't understand why Google, or anyone with a choice, would have involved political hacks in the decision making process for ethics in their company's products.

Oh.. [0]

Controversy followed almost immediately after the Heritage Foundation president was named to the eight-person council, with some speculating that her addition was Google's attempt to appease conservative lawmakers who have accused the tech giant of anti-conservative bias.

Look, I am sick of being politically correct about this. In modern times America's GOP true-believers have become the party of "alternate facts" on a variety of issues. Do you want your AI driver/doctor/accountant/climatologist to use alternate facts, or actual facts?

Aside from that particular argument, I don't think any dogmatic groups should be involved in AI in any way. People from political think tanks should be excluded by default, as they clearly have a bias. I don't care who they are, left/right/whatever.

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/google-cancels-ai-ethics-boa...

zcw100• 7 years ago

Screw Google and every other tech company on this list

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust...

diebeforei485• 7 years ago

Meredith Whittaker has a clear conflict of interest. As evidenced by her campaigning against Google's AI ethics board (and the resulting fallout), her organization's agenda for AI ethics conflicts with Google's, so she has to choose one or the other.

RickJWagner• 7 years ago

About Kay Cole James, Ms. James served as Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Resources under then-Governor George Allen and was the dean of Regent University's government school. She is currently a member of the NASA Advisory Council. She is the president and founder of the Gloucester Institute, a leadership training center for young African Americans. She is an African-American woman.

In other words, she is eminently qualified. Yet Meredith Whittaker organized people against her because she disagrees with her politics.

Ms. James has not one incident on record where she caused harm to anyone. She is merely the head of a conservative think-tank.

Diversity of thought is very important. I feel little sympathy for the trouble-causers. Google looked idiotic when it disbanded the council.

Google Walkout Organizers Say They're Facing Retaliation

Related Stories