Google Fires 28 for Anti-Israel Sit-in at Work

Google fired 28 employees in Sunnyvale and New York on Wednesday following them participating in a sit-in protest inside Google buildings against a $1.2 billion Israeli government cloud contract.

Before the current sit-in, Google had fired employees for protesting Israel before – the tech giant fired an employee last month for protesting a new cloud deal with the Israeli military during an event in New York.

However, these employee disruptions had only been sporadic. Other protests off company property were covered by the First Amendment. Law enforcement has intervened in past protest incidents as well, largely because of protestors blocking traffic and otherwise causing disruptions.

However, the sit-in protests at Google offices this week went far beyond what was allowable by law. A pro-Palestinian group objecting to Google working with the Israeli government, No Tech For Apartheid, helped organize dozens of Google employees to stage protests physically inside the offices. In Sunnyvale, they even went a step further and staged a protest in the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian.

“DOZENS OF GOOGLE WORKERS LEAD HISTORIC COAST TO COAST-INS AT GOOGLE CLOUD CEO THOMAS KURIAN’S OFFICE IN SUNNYVALE & GOOGLE’s NYC 10TH FLOOR COMMONS,” posted the group on X. “They refuse to leave until Google stops powering the genocide in Gaza.”

BREAKING—DOZENS OF @GOOGLE WORKERS LEAD HISTORIC COAST TO COAST-INS AT @GOOGLECLOUD CEO THOMAS KURIAN’S OFFICE IN SUNNYVALE & @GOOGLE’s NYC 10TH FLOOR COMMONS. They refuse to leave until @google stops powering the genocide in Gaza

LIVESTREAM: https://t.co/uUiPbr3oDz pic.twitter.com/vCkInh0769

— No Tech For Apartheid (@NoTechApartheid) April 16, 2024

Specifically, the protestors rallied against a $1.2 billion Israeli military contract called Project Nimbus, which provides cloud computing services through both Google and Amazon.

Police were quickly dispatched at both locations. Initially, only 9 employees were suspended and arrested. However, as the company began identifying all of the protesters who also blatantly broke the companies rules, firings were announced. On Wednesday, a total of 28 employees were fired for their part in the protests.

No Tech for Apartheid tried to claim that these firings were in retaliation. “In the three years that we have been organizing against Project Nimbus, we have yet to hear from a single executive about our concerns,” they said in a statement. “Google workers have the right to peacefully protest about terms and conditions of our labor. These firings were clearly retaliatory.”

However, the group rather quickly retreated from their statement following massive public backlash. Google security head Chris Rackow released a statement late on Wednesday explaining the incident and firings, saying:

“You may have seen reports of protests at some of our offices yesterday. Unfortunately, a number of employees brought the event into our buildings in New York and Sunnyvale. They took over office spaces, defaced our property, and physically impeded the work of other Googlers. Their behavior was unacceptable, extremely disruptive, and made coworkers feel threatened. We placed employees involved under investigation and cut their access to our systems. Those who refused to leave were arrested by law enforcement and removed from our offices.

“Following investigation, today we terminated the employment of twenty-eight employees found to be involved. We will continue to investigate and take action as needed. Behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it. It clearly violates multiple policies that all employees must adhere to — including our Code of Conduct and Policy on Harassment, Discrimination, Retaliation, Standards of Conduct, and Workplace Concerns.

“We are a place of business and every Googler is expected to read our policies and apply them to how they conduct themselves and communicate in our workplace. The overwhelming majority of our employees do the right thing. If you’re one of the few who are tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again. The company takes this extremely seriously, and we will continue to apply our longstanding policies to take action against disruptive behavior — up to and including termination.”

28 fired for protests

Casey Phillips, a former tech security consultant who dealt with protests at companies during the Iraq War, told the Globe on Thursday that the firings are hardly surprising. He also noted that more are likely to come because of the severity of what they did.

“If these employees went outside and chanted with signs, you know, it would have been fine depending on where they decided to do it at. For Google, just off campus on the corner where cars go in? Yeah, it would have been allowed. But not only did they do it on company property, they cracked their way into private offices to do this. They were asking to get fired.”

“Oh, and they just screwed themselves over for finding a job for awhile. Most employers will dig in and see that they did this. And they’ll be thinking ‘Hey, they protested to that extreme there. Will they do it here?’. There are so many other ways they could have done it legally. Would it be annoying to the company? Yes, especially with that big Israeli contract. But no, they decided to go this way. Maybe they wanted to be fired.”

“And no, it wasn’t retaliation. That group is just slinging mud at this point because they aren’t getting their way. Google gave their reasons in a clam and informative manner. It was crystal clear why they were fired.”

“The employees deserved it. You know, they could have asked for a transfer or something. But now they are screwed and can’t even get unemployment as this was a firing for cause. Unless they were aiming to be fired or trying to get some weird press, there was no reason to do this. They aren’t getting much sympathy for this, while Google is coming out of this as doing the right thing.”

A Google employee in Sunnyvale who witnessed the protestors also told the Globe on condition of anonymity, “When they started doing that, I think they thought all the employees would kind of be on their side. But really we were mostly uncomfortable. I knew a Jewish employee, and she was just watching this with a shocked expression and later said she was scared. And when we heard of them being fired yesterday, there wasn’t really any sympathy. We know what they were trying to do, but they did not succeed in the least.”

The 28 employees fired on Wednesday, as well as others who may still be fired as a result of the protests, could be part of the next major round of Google layoffs later this year. While the exact number isn’t known yet, it is expected to be a significant number similar to the layoffs made earlier this year.

More firings as a result of the protests are expected to be made soon.