Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/30/24145680/google-workers-fired-project-nimbus-protest-nlrb-complaint

by lladnar • 2 years ago

205 310 2 years ago

mvdtnz• 2 years ago

National Labor Relations Board, in case you're wondering. The author doesn't bother to define it until the 12th paragraph.

greenie_beans2• 2 years ago

it's' in your interest to know that acronym, whether your a laborer or owner.

nolongerthere• 2 years ago

You assume everyone lives and works in the US. If you’re not then you have no idea that that is.

Centigonal2• 2 years ago

This is a marked departure from the way Google has handled employee dissent in the past. In 2018, more than 600 Google workers signed an open letter opposing Project Dragonfly, an effort to build a search engine for China. As The Verge reported at the time, the petition began with an internally shared Google Doc, and all subsequent steps were also organized using Google products. Employees also urged Google to drop Project Maven, its contract with the US Department of Defense. That same year, over 20,000 Google employees staged a walkout in protest of the company’s handling of sexual harassment allegations against executives. [...]
“There’s been a total change in the way Google responds to employees trying to have a voice in their workplace,” the fired software engineer said. “It’s night and day from the Google of even five, 10 years ago.”

This is the most interesting part of the article for me. Google's approach today, versus how it reacted to the backlash against Maven in 2018, reflects a very different company with a different attitude toward the opinions of its employees.

asib• 2 years ago

It doesn't actually say anything about how Google handled those employee demonstrations though... Were they less draconian?

rufus_foreman4• 2 years ago

> Google's approach today, versus how it reacted to the backlash against Maven in 2018, reflects a very different company with a different attitude toward the opinions of its employees

I guess that's one possibility. Another possibility is that the owners and board of Google have a very different attitude towards protests in favor of Palestinians than the owners and board of Google had towards other protests in the past.

nailer2• 2 years ago

These protests aren’t in favour of Palestinians, they’re specifically against Israel, and empower and excuse a racist death cult that has taken over Gaza.

b1123• 2 years ago

One bit of info... this is an employer's market. 2108 was an employee's market.

lolinder2• 2 years ago

Did Google change, or was this protest substantially different in character?

In the reporting TFA links to about Maven I don't see any sign of employees staging disruptive protests on Google property. This is how Gizmodo describes that protest [0]:

Google’s decision to provide artificial intelligence to the Defense Department for the analysis of drone footage has prompted backlash from Google employees and academics. Thousands of employees have signed a petition asking Google to cancel its contract for the project, nicknamed Project Maven, and dozens of employees have resigned in protest.

A petition signed by thousands and a bunch of resignations are very different than staging a sit in in an executive's office and refusing to leave when asked. And both of the protests referred to in the past (Maven and sexual harassment) seem to have had a much stronger base of support than the 20-50 people who participated in this.

Is it possible that Google is the same Google and these people have gotten caught up in unreasonable post-2020 expectations for what valid political expression in the workplace looks like?

[0] https://gizmodo.com/google-plans-not-to-renew-its-contract-f...

Centigonal2• 2 years ago

I think the difference in the number of participants and base of support is material.

That said, the 2018 protests were definitely more disruptive than this one. 20,000 employees left their desks. [1]

Part of it might also be that several of the organizers of the 2018 walkouts left Google in the months following the walkouts (including Meredith Whittaker, who now runs the company behind Signal).

I think my original argument in the GP is wrong. The more I read about this topic, the more the true narrative seems like "after the 2018 walk-outs, Google took steps to ensure mass political action within the company like the action that tanked Maven would never happen again," and we're now seeing the results of those steps.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Google_walkouts

lupire8• 2 years ago

Google's militaristic business contracts, and militant protests thereof, have both been ramping up in the past decade.

Google was not founded as a military contractor making targeting systems for missiles. But now they are.

robertlagrant5• 2 years ago

This is the most interesting part of the article for me. Google's approach today, versus how it reacted to the backlash against Maven in 2018, reflects a very different company with a different attitude toward the opinions of its employees.

I have two theories, both come with no warranty:

- Google is alarmed at how much "trust and safety" affected their ability to deliver LLMs, and is listening fractionally less to people of this political viewpoint

- Google has more existential threats and no more ridiculous ZIRP to coast along on, and so needs real income from customers that value it

- The Google department that owns this contract has some clout, and wanted to show its high-paying customer that it wasn't going to be swayed by the politics of its staff members

robertlagrant5• 2 years ago

(I added the third theory and forgot to reword.)

cad314• 2 years ago

Dammit this is so dumb. Half of google employees I know are literally racist against Chinese people. This is about China vs Israel, not a change in approach.

pcwalton• 2 years ago

Google is very explicitly doing mass layoffs throughout the year. At this time, the company has every incentive to fire liberally. They have a quota of headcount to reduce through 2024, and firing for cause is better for morale (not to mention severance costs) than firing employees with good track records. If their layoff quota is 20% for the year, 20% of Google's employees broke the rules somehow, and Google fired them all, that'd be a great outcome for the company. That would mean they don't have to conduct mass layoffs, with all the morale and severance baggage that comes with.

PierceJoy• 2 years ago

I’m assuming at will employment makes this very unlikely to be successful.

papercrane• 2 years ago

At will employment doesn't matter here. Even with at-will employment it is illegal to fire employees for some reasons. For example, it's generally against the law to fire employees for discussing their work conditions.

I think the employees will have a difficult case here, but it is conceivable that some of them might. For example I could see the NLRB ruling in favor of an employee who was fired after for expressing concern about a project with Israel, but I think the employees who staged a sit-in probably don't have a case.

AnotherGoodName• 2 years ago

Well you can't fire people for political reasons. It's a protected category. So the crux of it will likely depend on if there's similar protests from opposing viewpoints that were not dealt with similarly. Eg. If there were any counter protestors at the same event that weren't also fired that's a reasonably clear cut case of firing a group for political views.

zeroonetwothree5• 2 years ago

Political affiliation is not a protected class. California law does restrict employers from punishing employees for their political activities, but this generally applies to activities done outside of work.

worried4future7• 2 years ago

The meat of it is here:

Google “retaliated against approximately 50 employees and interfered with their Section 7 rights by terminating and/or placing them on administrative leave in response to their protected concerted activity, namely, participation (or perceived participation) in a peaceful, non-disruptive protest that was directly and explicitly connected to their terms and conditions of work,” the complaint reads.

Seems very thin to call on the NLRA here. The "protesters" stated goals were to disrupt work even for people not a member of the non-union (therefore not a strike) which is not a protected activity. Moreover, were any of these employees or any members of the minority union actually working on the Israeli contracts they objected to? While you can protest against your job duties under the NLRA (or job duties of your collective union members) I don't see that you can protest against company functions which aren't job duties you or your class aren't a part of.

If the workers had just walked off the job and peacefully and non-disruptively protested in front of the building and refused to go back to their job until they (or other members of the minority union) had their job duties modified so they were not working on those projects and google had fired them, that seems like it would violate the NLRA.

Anyway this seems like some fun FAFO. I wonder how many of the people who got fired were even members of the non-union before the "protest".

Simulacra2• 2 years ago

It depends. Given the administrations position on such things right now, the NLRA could be used as a intimidation club against Google to settle.

toast0• 2 years ago

I mean, go ahead and file a complaint, right?

But my read of the situation while skimming the NLRB summary [1] is this complaint is unlikely to win

Strikes unlawful because of misconduct of strikers or other loss of protection. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a “sitdown” strike, when employees simply stay in the plant and refuse to work is not protected by the law.

This feels pertinent, but not a whole match.

Furthermore, Section 8(b)(4) of the Act prohibits strikes for certain objects even though the objects are not necessarily unlawful if achieved by other means. An example of this would be a strike to compel Employer A to cease doing business with Employer B. It is not unlawful for Employer A voluntarily to stop doing business with Employer B, nor is it unlawful for a union merely to request that it do so. It is, however, unlawful for the union to strike with an object of forcing the employer to do so. These points will be covered in more detail in the explanation of Section 8(b)(4). In any event, employees who participate in an unlawful strike may be discharged and are not entitled to reinstatement.

On the summary page, this looks like striking to prevent their employer from doing business with another employer (IDF) and might apply, but further reading seems to indicate this is about striking to not do business with a non-union employer, which isn't actually relevant. But either way, it's not clear to me that striking about who your employer does business with is a 'lawful' strike.

[1] https://www.nlrb.gov/strikes

choppaface• 2 years ago

The key difference here is that Google really wants the DoD contract and doesn’t care who’s on the losing side of the real battle.

The Google Walkout in the wake of Andy Rubin, David Drummond etc was far more disruptive to their business yet Google on paper felt they got a great deal on the severance packages of Rubin and Drummond ($0). Or at least Sundar was proud of how he cleaned up those messes.

worried4future7• 2 years ago

I also don't think this counts as a strike, at least the actions taken do not fully fall within the protections of a strike even if they were striking for a reason for which strikes are permitted. Disruptive protest like what this was isn't a legal strike.

Anyway I have no objection to them taking things to the NLRB, I just don't think they will win. I suspect google will settle by paying some or most of the terminated employees some severance or some other token gesture and will consider themselves lucky to be rid of activist employees.

racional10• 2 years ago

This is a gross misreading of what the article actually said.

The real meat the article (as reflected very clearly in its original title, not the mangled caption that was unfortunately used for the post; and throughout the article body itself) is that Google apparently fired some 20+ employees who either weren't involved the protest at all, or whose alleged participation remains unclear.

As if the higher-ups got together and said to each other: "Ya know, 28 heads just isn't enough. We need to go out and bust some more, to you know, make a point. Plus there's that sound their skull makes when hitting the pavement. I just can't enough of it!"

Google might dispute this - then again Google lies about a lot of things. We'll see how the complaint process goes.

Either way you're going off on an ancilliary aspect of the article, not its main thrust.

worried4future7• 2 years ago

Google apparently fired some 20+ employees who either weren't involved the protest at all, or whose alleged participation remains unclear

Maybe that's true, maybe it's not, but there is deep information asymmetry here and google has all the advantage and must have anticipated that this would end up in discovery and litigation and that the records of the terminated people's employment would be subject to it. That means their chat history, their email history and office surveillance footage.

I have a hard time believing that google would have fired people where the sum of their recorded actions couldn't be reasonably construed to be disruptive.

6510• 2 years ago

Reminds me of the Chinese social credit system. Having an opinion is terrible, talking with someone who has an opinion is arguably worse! That is how the disease spreads! The signal is that you should cover your ears and run away.

smsm426• 2 years ago

who either weren't involved the protest at all,

Or at least they say that. Which may or may not be true. Maybe google is lying, maybe they are lying. I imagine if NLRB asks, Google will be willing to provide the grounds for firing and we'd know who is the liar here.

xyst4• 2 years ago

Has anybody noticed that whenever the protests pop up. Major news outlets tend to spin them as some sort of haven for “anti-Semitism” or cite them as the “violent protests”.

I have yet to see organizations (at least on the ground, in major press releases) cite anything that represents hate against the Jewish population. Only rhetoric I have heard is those protesting the horrific actions of the Israeli government/military and the US governments enabling of those actions.

Horrific actions by the Israeli government so far (at least since the Hamas raid): indiscriminate bombing in Gaza, bombing of hospitals, many civilians impacted and from what I gather most are underage children.

Some American-Israelis at these protests (some even young adults in college) keep repeating the rhetoric by the media as well. Have seen some students say these protests are rampant with anti-Semitic rants and that these protests “want to get rid of them [Jewish students]”

Again, I have been to a few of these protests (especially the ones in TX) and have yet to see anything of this sort. I have unfortunately seen people sitting on lawns not resisting law enforcement get their faces smashed into the ground by state troopers.

Is the Israeli political machine just very effective? Or am I the delusional one ignoring the obvious?

If it’s the latter, please point me to evidence of pro-Palestine organizations supporting the violent actions of Hamas terrorists. I don’t want to see individuals that have no visible ties spouting bullshit. There should be a press release by the orgs or leaders of these orgs stating this as such.

So far I have come up empty as far as credible sources.

slantedview2• 2 years ago

Has anybody noticed that whenever the protests pop up. Major news outlets tend to spin them as some sort of haven for “anti-Semitism” or cite them as the “violent protests”.

Yes. The reason for this is that people who oppose the protests, and effectively support what officials at the UN are calling an ongoing genocide, cannot win any argument on its merits. So the only thing they can do is paint the protesters as antisemitic, even though many protesters are Jewish. It's pathetic but effective, for now.

the_gastropod4• 2 years ago

This is how it always seems to go. A huge segment of Americans still refer to the George Floyd protests as "George Floyd Riots" that "burned down" cities. It's, obviously, a ridiculous characterization of an overwhelmingly peaceful nation-wide set of protests.

Georgelemental11• 2 years ago

The Floyd riots did lead to several deaths and billions of dollars in damage, documentation of that is an internet search away. Completely different from the current round of protests against Israeli brutality (which, unlike "systemic racism", is actually real)

haberman2• 2 years ago

Those "overwhelmingly peaceful" protests caused an estimated $1-2B in property damage, making them the most destructive protests (from an insurance perspective) in the last 50 years: https://www.axios.com/2020/09/16/riots-cost-property-damage

ipaddr• 2 years ago

George Floyd Riots overwhelming peaceful? Not if we stick with facts.

"arson, vandalism, and looting that occurred between May 26 and June 8 caused approximately $1–2 billion in insured damages nationally, the highest recorded damage from civil disorder in U.S. history, and surpassing the record set during the 1992 Los Angeles riots"

SpicyLemonZest2• 2 years ago

If it’s the latter, please point me to evidence of pro-Palestine organizations supporting the violent actions of Hamas terrorists. I don’t want to see individuals that have no visible ties spouting bullshit. There should be a press release by the orgs or leaders of these orgs stating this as such.

The question is whether this is an unreasonably strong standard. Even Hamas themselves have not issued a clear official statement in support of their actions; their spokespeople variably claim that they did not commit any atrocities on October 7, or that the atrocities against civilians were collateral damage in a legitimate military operation.

slantedview2• 2 years ago

These protests aren't about Hamas though. There are other protests about that, and surely those are valid. These protests are about Israel's campaign of what UN officials say is genocide. Most attempts to change the subject to Hamas are bad faith attempts to protect Israel from culpability.

dekhn• 2 years ago

the Israeli PR and propaganda machine is very effective. But I think some of the more extreme behavior (as you point out, very quickly citing anti-semitism) is starting to be recognized, and the overton window is shifting towards more skepticism of israeli claims.

I suspect some of the most virulent statements being made by protesters are being made by what I call the professional protestor class- people who like to show up at protests and cause problems (my friend called them the "fuck shit up contingent") for fun.

dralley2• 2 years ago

the Israeli PR and propaganda machine is very effective.

Vastly less effective than the competing one, IMO.

There are people that still, to this day, think that Al-Ahli hospital was bombed by Israel and that hundreds of people were killed. It seems to be a widespread belief that Israel is primarily European-descended wheras in fact more than half of Israeli jews are Mizrahi - they were refugees from places like Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco. There are people that shout about globalizing the intifada without having any idea what those words mean.

nsguy7• 2 years ago

Just one example:

"Eby’s remarks on the encampment came after he and other politicians denounced an earlier demonstration in Vancouver where protesters chanted “long live Oct. 7,” praising that day’s attacks by Hamas on Israel."

https://www.cheknews.ca/eby-deplores-most-hateful-speech-pra...

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/group-banned-in-germany-get...

I think Israel's PR machine is very ineffective. It's swamped by anti-Israeli PR. E.g. where do you get "bombing of hospitals"? How many hospitals in Gaza were bombed? Which hospitals specifically are they, what were the circumstances, what damage did they sustain?

Georgelemental11• 2 years ago

bombing of hospitals

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2024/01/middleeast/gaza-hosp...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2024/4/18/satellite-...

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/jordan-field-hospital-i...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/18/bloodbath-israel-k...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/26/world/middleeast/gaza-isr...

https://www.who.int/news/item/06-04-2024-six-months-of-war-l...

xyst4• 2 years ago

In the Vancouver demonstration referenced by “Eby”, I see the chants were from a group called “ Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).”

Appears to be a known terrorist organization. Is this organization affiliated with ALL or most of the college campus organizers we see across the USA?

Something I’ll have to ask and bring up. Something smells odd.

In the second article, it references a group or network called “ Samidoun Prisoners Solidarity Network” which again appears to have links to PFLP. Maybe the fundraising and propaganda machine arm.

All sources indicate both orgs with ties to past violence but does that mean that these 2 orgs are tied to every college campus student org as well?

Nothing is quite clear here. Not enough information. Need some real journalists to clear the air.

I agree. These orgs and people are disgusting. But the gatherings and protests I have been to have not chanted anything of this sort. Not even a dog whistle as mentioned in some comments.

I’ll have to do more digging though. Thanks for providing some links though

AxEy• 2 years ago

Does this qualify?

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/ucb-police-seek-...

"The five people were part of a group of about 200 protesters, who on Feb. 26 broke down the door of Zellerbach Playhouse and smashed a window to prevent Israeli lawyer Ran Bar-Yoshafat from addressing a group of Jewish students. Danielle Sobkin, co-president of Bears for Israel, one of the campus groups who invited Bar-Yoshafat, said after the protest that members of the mob grabbed a student trying to attend the event, called him a “dirty Jew” and spat on him."

khazhoux5• 2 years ago

5 hateful racist people in a group of 200. That’s not unusual.

xyst4• 2 years ago

5 people acting in mob mentality doesn’t exactly fit the bill of a whole organization sponsoring the hate crime. Seems more like smooth brain assholes that want to fuck it up for everyone. Which honestly every protest has at least a few.

Are there are any orgs in UC Berkeley supporting these hateful actions? Are any of the 5 people leaders of the student orgs? Or local orgs in the area? So many unanswered questions. Too much speculation.

zeroonetwothree5• 2 years ago

Obviously not all protesters are anti-semitic but you must be willfully ignorant to honestly believe that none of them are. For example, here are some signs that have been found in protests (you can find examples on google):

- "from the river to the sea" -> implies the destruction of Israel

- "keep the world clean" -> seems to imply some sort of "cleansing" of Jews

- "by any means necessary" -> seems to condone violence against Jews

I'm sure you can find other examples very easily.

I will admit that I didn't see anything overtly anti-semitic from the Google protesters specifically. Of course, it seems they were fired for violating workplace rules, not their actual viewpoint.

Georgelemental11• 2 years ago

"from the river to the sea" -> implies the destruction of Israel

"From the river to the sea" has been used to mean many things. At one point it was a Zionist slogan. Hamas uses it to imply horrible things, and maybe it's not the smartest move for protesters to use the same phrase, but that doesn't mean their intentions are nefarious, no more than Hindus using the swastika makes them Nazi

khazhoux5• 2 years ago

Is someone actually claiming that none of them are anti-semitic?

The pro-Hamas antisemites are in the tiny majority of the protesters.

someotherperson• 2 years ago

You can read this into anything.

- "from the river to the sea" -> implies the destruction of Israel

The Israeli vs. Palestinian conflict is, for the Palestinians, about property rights. And both sides claim the full area between the Jordan river to the Sea. Plenty of groups say the same thing, whether it's the Chinese view on Taiwan ("one China!") or the ISIS view on the Middle East (and half of Europe and Asia..) being "one Ummah" and nobody calls it racist.

The funny part with that is that it's literally just a pun on the original Israeli Likud party slogan of "between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty"[0]. The other day Netanyahu said the same thing with "West of the Jordan river."[1] Is that whatever the Palestinian equivalent of antisemitism is?

- "keep the world clean" -> seems to imply some sort of "cleansing" of Jews

All the examples I've seen (as stupid as the phrase is, people seem to copy it as if it's witty) have included the Israeli flag. There are plenty of people that roast Turks and Turkey, but the addition of the crescent moon on their flag doesn't turn into a roast on all of Islam.

Israel has intentionally conflated being anti-Jewish with being anti-Israeli so that you can't target the latter, but somehow also rides the wave of Israeli actions can't be attributed to Jews in general. It's a strange take but if anything has led to a rise in actual antisemitism (as in the anti-Jewish variety) it has been that intentional muddying of the waters.

This also isn't to take away from your main point that there is plenty of real antisemitism out there. I'm sure there is, and it's probably underreported if anything. But the majority of the examples given by pro-Israeli groups (chosen only because they're most visible) are not it.

[0] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/original-party-platform...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgdFOIiRpr0

hedora• 2 years ago

A lot of people are spreading a false equivalence between being antisemitic and protesting the slaughter of civilians and children.

Does that count?

khazhoux5• 2 years ago

This is very true.

Still, I’m terribly disappointed how reticent that side is to strongly condemn Hamas and 10/7.

Their message is not clean.

Shekelphile2• 2 years ago

Israel doesn't slaughter civilians. In fact, asymmetric tactics and terror attacks against civilians is constantly perpetrated by hamas (as evidenced on 10/7)

hirvi74• 2 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zazcVU_rNyQ (NSFW: Language)

xyst4• 2 years ago

Mob mentality really brings out the worst in us.

Still seems like mini groups of assholes lashing out on whoever with reckless abandon.

The dog whistles were definitely fucked up.

Although, what’s the deal with “Zionism”? Seems like the exact opposite of the extreme pro-Palestinian groups (ie, PLFP).

The loudest ones in these videos tend to be associated with either extreme and polar opposites. But I don’t believe most Jewish and Palestinian people would fall into either of these groups.

Just as the far right and far left in USA get all the attention on the news networks, social media, vods, your uncle that death scrolls on FB too long. In reality that doesn’t represent the true make up of America.

khazhoux5• 2 years ago

It seems 99% of the protesters are there because of the 13-to-25,000 dead children and women, but the 1% that condone Hamas’s October attack make the news.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/unicef-says-over-1...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/1/more-than-25000-wome...

bitcurious• 2 years ago

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/29/nyregion/college-protests...

A fairly credible source discussing just this question. A pretty blatant example is a linked video of protestors intimidating three Jewish students while claiming that they are “zionists” without any evidence except the students’ Jewishness.

defrost2• 2 years ago

Were these protestors the ones that were arrested holding a Passover seder in New York?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/24/not-like-other...

Or were these student protestors at Columbia?

https://zeteo.com/p/i-am-a-jewish-student-at-columbia

manlobster• 2 years ago

Googler protests in the past have typically been walk-outs and other outdoor gatherings. This protest took place within the offices. Some of the protestors occupied senior executives' offices for many hours, and had to be removed by the police. Some of the protestors also streamed their protest from within the offices of the notoriously confidentiality-obsessed company.

I don't buy the narrative that Google is cracking down on employee activism. It seems more like the activists in this instance went too far and were dealt with accordingly.

llm_nerd2• 2 years ago

I think it's fair to say that Google is cracking down. They did tolerate activities like this previously, but came down like a hammer on this. It seems like they are setting a precedent and giving fair warning to anyone else thinking of doing something similar. Things like this can be viral, as seen with the college protests. And the more enabled they are, the worse they get, as seen with Columbia.

And to be fair there has been a big shift in the market for tech workers. There was a sort of indispensable aura that protected tech employees before that just isn't there any more. People who think this sort of thing wouldn't yield a rapid firing are living in the past.

There is a video from the participants-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLiWHO71fOU&lc=

I find it rather incredible. They end it by announcing that they should all be reinstated because they "did nothing wrong". They repeatedly talk as if they expected just to have their "concerns heard", to get a warning, etc.

As an aside, what is with the insane, anti-HN moderation in here? Rational, constructive comments are greyed out because someone's raging bias is countered.

D13Fd2• 2 years ago

I find it rather incredible. They end it by announcing that they should all be reinstated because they "did nothing wrong". They repeatedly talk as if they expected just to have their "concerns heard", to get a warning, etc.

Yeah. This is true "privilege" speaking -- they don't seem to realize how fortunate they were to be in their positions in the first place.

Companies employ you because it's a good deal for them. If you're lucky, you find a place where it is a good deal for you too. Protesting and disrupting work changes that calculus for the company. It's no longer a good deal for them, and the unsurprising result is that they don't want to employ such people or hire them back.

relaxing• 2 years ago

The idea that live streaming the protests was going to leak corporate secrets is also laughable.

cad314• 2 years ago

This idea that projects are "confidential" is a classic for keeping employees on their toes and preventing them from asking questions.

Willish423• 2 years ago

I don't buy the narrative that Google is cracking down on employee activism.

Seriously? As somebody who's followed this stuff closely there's loads of historical precedent here for assuming exactly that. Including with NLRB and retaliation from other "good kinds of protests".

https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/25/20983053/google-fires-fo...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/02/google-la...

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/3/23624631/alphabet-cognizan...

bb88• 2 years ago

Either way, they're not coming back into the building, and Google would probably rather fight a law suit than dealing with these people personally ever again.

garbagewoman2• 2 years ago

Why do you say that google would rather not deal with them personally?

DevKoala• 2 years ago

I chatted with them for maybe four minutes, like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re still sitting here! How’s it going?’
That night, while at dinner, he got an email from Google saying he had been terminated.

That is almost like out of a Silicon Valley episode, but gone dark.

reactordev6• 2 years ago

Rule number one of being a rebel. Don’t do it at work. Protest all you want in the public streets where you have freedom of assembly. You do NOT have that freedom within a corporate office building. Regardless of employer. A few firings and maybe they’ll get the message to take it outside.

I empathize with people wanting to speak out over something they are passionate about. I do this often. Just know your venue and know your audience. Bridges take a while to build…

rufus_foreman4• 2 years ago

> Rule number one of being a rebel. Don’t do it at work

By doing it at work, they are risking high paying jobs, putting their careers at risk. In public.

Risking something for a protest is the whole point. To the extent that they do that with their eyes open, risking high paying jobs, they are heroes.

If they do that thinking the people who control Google will be fine with that and they will still keep their jobs, they are, well, without jobs.

zeroonetwothree5• 2 years ago

Their actions achieved nothing of consequence. I don't see how that makes them "heroes", even from the point of view of someone that supports their views.

tolerantgravity• 2 years ago

Then they shouldn't be suing imo. Suing implies they think they shouldn't have been fired, which means their risk was not intentional. So they're not heroes.

reactordev6• 2 years ago

Risking something for a protest is the whole point.

I can think of a number of protests that didn’t involve risking one’s career, livelihood, or life - that were pretty successful outside the workplace. Inside the workplace, it’s not a public venue and you don’t have the right to occupy offices and sit ins and disrupt work while expecting the company to pay you for that time.

Get realistic. They aren’t heroes. They are trespassers. Disruptive ex-employees that cost the company money. Now if they did this right outside Google offices on the streets, that’s a different story all together. That’s a public place. However, many states have at-will employment so if the company feels you no longer represent their interests, you’re done. Bye. Doesn’t matter the cause.

devsda3• 2 years ago

At almost every company I've worked over the years, I had to go through countless mandatory annual trainings that effectively says expressing opinions on non work related subjective political topics with coworkers/employer is not advisable, risky and can be grounds for termination in extreme cases.

Either these people genuinely believed there was scope for discussion, or believed their opinion/choice of topic is a PR minefield that their employer wouldn't dare take action or they really wanted to get fired.

I'm not from the US. So, unless I'm missing some cultural context, their actions like political activism at work (unless related to labor issues and laws) are unthinkable atleast in my country.

reactordev6• 2 years ago

Those trainings are mandatory but usually done via an edutech platform that is basically just a QuickTime movie. Ethics, compliance, corporate policy, it’s just a 30 minute video you play while you do something else and then click the obvious multiple choice answers for 100%. Then forget everything in a week.

Lately it’s been those 2D animations using canned software and AI voice over because that’s cheaper than actually giving a damn. Animaker I believe.

asadotzler• 2 years ago

This was most certainly work related. It was about a Google contract which is 100% related to Google and workers at Google.

bjourne11• 2 years ago

What country and what company made you undergo these "countless" training sessions? I suspect you are making stuff up.

francisofascii2• 2 years ago

Sure, agree, but what about the employee in the article who wondered onto the 10th floor to check out the protest. That person wasn't actively protesting. And that person gets fired. That's not right.

reactordev6• 2 years ago

Guilty by association. Again, at-will employment means they can justify it however they want to and it’s totally legal. Unless the individual is part of a union…

araes• 2 years ago

Rule number one of being a rebel.

Don't work for the Empire.

cad314• 2 years ago

Let me fix this for you

Rule number one of being a rebel

Work for the Empire. Just don't be surprised when you get fired, but complain about it anyway, because why not.

glimshe• 2 years ago

Anyone can sue or complain about anyone else. It doesn't mean that they will get anything out of it. In this particular case, I'm seeing many people who support their message speaking against what they did.

sevagh• 2 years ago

I had a similar moral conflict at a workplace and I dealt with it by resigning. Despite my outrage, I can't imagine occupying the office of my boss as an acceptable move. It's not illegal for my company to do business I disagree with, and if I don't like it, I leave. Simple.

DangitBobby5• 2 years ago

Resigning under protest isn't really effective unless you are difficult to replace. Even in that scenario, you can almost certainly "protest" more effectively by speaking out and seeking targeted changes and then ultimately resigning or forcing them to fire you when they don't change. Protesting is at its core being an un-ignorable pain in the ass until a problem gets fixed. Resigning is pretty ignorable, especially if your reasons for doing so are not clear.

siva74• 2 years ago

“There’s been a total change in the way Google responds to employees trying to have a voice in their workplace,” the fired software engineer said. “It’s night and day from the Google of even five, 10 years ago.”

Having a political voice is different than having a voice against sexual harassment at the workplace. Please don't mix things that don't belong together. Radically expressing your political voice during your job duties will get you fired in almost all companies. SV was very lax with this in the past. They just adjusted to how it is normally handled in corporate.

tovej4• 2 years ago

I feel like I have to push back against the idea that it is "radical" to object to your labor being used in a genocide.

Am I the only one that feels like this is a fairly straightforward moral issue, and one I would expect to -- at the very least -- be allowed to express myself about. I also think the resolution of the moral issue is fairly straightforward, but I accept that there will be multiple opinions there. Still, people supporting Israel have not been fired, and supporting a genocide is -- in my mind -- a much more radical political position than objecting to one.

trueismywork• 2 years ago

Sexual harassment cases are much more black and white and actionable than genocide cases.

gedy2• 2 years ago

Still, people supporting Israel have not been fired

I've worked in past with people who were very passionate Gaza supporters. And they received nothing but praise, but their work may have supported people involved with Oct 7th massacres. Should they be fired too?

siva74• 2 years ago

It strikes me wrong to call this a genocide as a survivor of an actual genocide. So i have maybe a narrower definition of the word but i feel obligated because of my experiences to remind to being very careful with this word

bko• 2 years ago

They're free to leave and should state their reasons. What they're not free to do is disrupt the mission of the company and feel entitled to do so without any consequences. These people weren't fired because they answered some question incorrectly on a mandatory survey. They laid on the floor, prevented people from doing their work and harassed people making many feel uncomfortable. When you see someone like that behaving at your business, do you stop and think "let me hear them out"

It's not complicated.

bjourne11• 2 years ago

Who says that a totalitarian attitude is desirable?? Freedom of speech implies that expressing your opinions should not cost you your job.

tekla• 2 years ago

I was told that speech had consequences and anything but the Govt literally silencing you was ok for decades.

Damn. I guess that NOW HN cares about free speech, after highly paid fellows get fired from their jobs for doing dumb shit

neverokay3• 2 years ago

The issue with free speech historically or currently worldwide is that governments can silence, jail or kill you. It’s a civic issue, not business one.

cogman103• 2 years ago

No it does not and it never has.

Freedom of speech is a protection from the government, not other citizens.

And I suspect the only reason people take this view is because the speech is something they agree with. Would you, for example, feel like Google was being totalitarian if Hitler Hank hosted a sit in protest against the company for hiring people of color and he was subsequently fired?

BobaFloutist2• 2 years ago

Is occupying your CEO's office until removed by law enforcement speech?

ThrowawayR25• 2 years ago

Has the illiberal left not been smugly telling us "Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences" when others lost their jobs? They hardly have any right to complain when they are hoist by their own petard.

thebytefairy• 2 years ago

Then we can argue they were not performing their job duties instead. How long should one be allowed to protest on the clock?

linearrust3• 2 years ago

SV was very lax with this in the past. They just adjusted to how it is normally handled in corporate.

What's remarkable is that SV allowed protests against US, china, russia, anyone really. But protest against israeli war crimes is where they drew the line.

SV, media, congress, everyone supported violent protests that burned down cities. But peaceful protests in college campuses against israeli genocide is where they send in the storm troopers.

In china, they send in the storm troopers if you protest communist rule. It's interesting what we send the storm troopers for. Food for thought.

shmatt2• 2 years ago

They and We are doing some extra leg work here

They were fired for blocking a senior executives private office.

Do that in the name of US, china, russia, sesame street, and you're getting fired.

smsm426• 2 years ago

Radically expressing your political voice during your job duties will get you fired in almost all companies

That very much depends on which political voice it is. If it's within approved voices, which lies very heavily to the left, then you'll be likely celebrated. But if you take it too far left - or, horrible dictu, a little to the right - then you'd get the boot. It's been like this 10 years ago and is now, it's just now the incessant push to the left is temporarily diverging from what Google approves, and also the tolerance for physically disruptive actions seems to thin out - while the left seems to get more and more bold, graduating from writing letters to physically disrupting work. The combination of non-approved cause and physical disruption is a sure recipe to get the boot, indeed.

edmundsauto• 2 years ago

What is the generalizable evidence you base this opinion on? Surely you must have access to a database of the real reasons someone was fired across all of tech?

Two4• 2 years ago

It seems quite strange to attribute the actions of a group individuals to some nebulous force - "the left". It's weird to see such reductionism to a binary axis for something as complex as the intersection of politics, commerce and personal values.

constantcrying• 2 years ago

Extremely unsurprising that they got fired and it seems somewhat far fetched. If your employer works as a military contractor for a state which actions you oppose so much that you engage in a protest, then obviously you can not work there.

If you vehemently oppose US military involvement in the world you should not work at Raytheon. It simply is an arrangement which can not work, neither you, nor your employer should be interested.

francisofascii2• 2 years ago

The story here isn't the people who were fired for protesting. That's fine. The story is the people fired for watching the protest or being vaguely associated with the people in the protest.

throwaway143562• 2 years ago

I wonder, would there be a difference if the employees had to kill women en children themselves and if so, how many steps of automation would make it?

throwaway143562• 2 years ago

With everyone so hung up on if to call the slaughter of woman, old people and children genocide or not the question seems fair.

There seems to be a desire to transform a rather obvious reality into something that doesn't sound so bad.

commandlinefan• 2 years ago

If they're successful, I hope James Damore jumps in on this.

linearrust3• 2 years ago

What a difference a few years makes.

Top comment here : "Don’t do it at work."

Top comment a few years ago : "If you work at Google and you have participated in this protest: Thank you."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17776276

The comments back then were very supportive of google employees protesting against china's censorship. While the top comments here seem to be against google employees protesting israeli war crimes.

Why? A bit of a head scratcher.

BobaFloutist2• 2 years ago

Hundreds of Google employees, upset at the company’s decision to secretly build a censored version of its search engine for China, have signed a letter demanding more transparency to understand the ethical consequences of their work.
Google fired 28 employees in connection with sit-in protests at two of its offices this week...Some of them occupied the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian until they were forcibly removed by law enforcement.

acoard• 2 years ago

Why? A bit of a head scratcher.

It is because not everyone sees Israel as committing war crimes. I'm not looking in getting into a debate about it, I don't think this is the appropriate thread and do not want to run afoul of HN guidelines. But to treat your question as if it is serious and sincere (i.e. not a rhetorical question) the answer is because many do not see Israel as committing war crimes but basically everyone agreed China was censoring. I'd also add that censorship can be a particularly sensitive topic the tech community is largely more polarized against than the wider country, whereas weapons of war are viewed by some as valid defensive work. Basically, nerds care about censorship disproportionately. And of course, opinions on both China and Israel would be baked into this too.

Again, not looking to get into the actual substance of these points here, merely answering your question for why large amounts of people see these as different.

keefle• 2 years ago

While true, i think this answer misses the hypocrisy of the situation.

1. The same people who were supportive of the previous protests, are today's people who suggest "don't do it at work". 2. Regardless of whether Israel is commiting war crimes or not, if one is to be consistent, they must advocate that both the China censorship and genocide protests be done outside of work. 3. The main takeaway here is the bias (justified or not), and disappoint and disturbing hypocrisy in the reaction to the aforementioned protest

cyanydeez• 2 years ago

Free moneytrain is over and google is going full IBM Dinosaur, at best. Oracle dinosaur towards worse.

stormfather• 2 years ago

Part of it is likely to be how the US government will react. If Google is seen as anti-China that is fine, if they are seen as anti-Israel they might lose important contracts.

smsm426• 2 years ago

I understand in the China case they didn't actually physically occupied workspace and prevented others from doing their work? They wrote a letter. I think there's a bit of a difference between writing a letter and barging into your bosses office and telling them you're not leaving until they do what you want.

shmatt2• 2 years ago

Imagine if all these protesters did was to sign a letter. We could only wish, and get on with our jobs

AtlasBarfed• 2 years ago

If you look at it in terms of AI, I think it makes more sense.

Google the information enabler was a clear benefit to mankind. Pretty easy to be aspirational there. Happy fun liberal improve the world thinking. Expand participation and information awareness.

Google the surveillance tool and AI merchant for governments and corporations for leveraging total surveillance? .... Yeah. But that's where the bucks are.

Google has clearly moved very far into full enshittimonification of its information. It needs compliant obedient workers to shut up and make it money. Alphabet the big ideas has pretty much totally failed, the only thing succeeding is surveillance: Android and Search. Google doesn't need free, liberal, smart thinkers. It needs order takers.

cad314• 2 years ago

This has nothing to do with "a few years", and has everything to do with Israel being perceived as a US ally and China being perceived as an enemy. Basically nothing has changed.

InTheArena• 2 years ago

Given the NLRB's position on "Google's ideological echo chamber," - the likelihood that the NLBR would rule in their favor seems non-existent given their strong defense of corporate rights to punish speech at work.

(/s for those who need it)

Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

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