Dozens of Google workers who were fired for protesting the tech giant’s cloud deal with the Israeli government filed a complaint on Monday with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over their termination.
The complaint, obtained by The Washington Post, alleges that Google violated the workers’ 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 workers are seeking reinstatement of their jobs and back pay, alleging that Google had “unlawfully retaliated” against them for engaging in “peaceful” protest, Jane Chung, a spokesperson for No Tech for Apartheid, was quoted as saying by the New York Post.
No Tech for Apartheid, the group organizing the protests, claimed that Google fired over 20 workers on April 23, including non-participating bystanders.
This adds to the 30 workers fired last week for their involvement in sit-in protests at Google offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, bringing the total number of terminated workers to over 50 people.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The protests targeted a $1.2 billion deal known as Project Nimbus that provides artificial intelligence technology to the Israeli government.
The fired workers contend that the system is being lethally deployed in the Gaza war.
“Google’s aims are clear: the corporation is attempting to quash dissent, silence its workers, and reassert its power over them,” the group said in an April 23 press release.
“In its attempts to do so, Google has decided to unceremoniously, and without due process, upend the livelihoods of over 50 of its own workers,” it added.
The activist group has vowed to continue organizing until their demands are met: for Google to “drop Project Nimbus and stop powering Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza now.”
Project Nimbus was signed in 2021. It involves joint cloud computing and AI services provided by Google and Amazon to the Israeli government. Google has said that the program is not being utilized for military or intelligence purposes.
Google has said that it fired the workers after gathering details from coworkers who were “physically disrupted” and it identified employees who used masks and didn’t carry their staff badges to hide their identities. Google didn’t specify how many were fired.
In a blog post on April 18, Google CEO Sundar Pichai hinted that workers will be on a short leash as the company intensifies its efforts to improve its AI technology at a pivotal moment in the industry and, potentially, humanity. He did not openly refer to a specific incident.
“But ultimately we are a workplace and our policies and expectations are clear: this is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics,” Mr Pichai wrote.
“We have a duty to be an objective and trusted provider of information that serves all of our users globally,” he added.
It’s not the first time Google workers have protested against some of the company’s ventures and its approach to AI development.
A previous protest by employees in 2018 resulted in Google’s termination of a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense called “Project Maven.” The contract was largely focused on assisting armed forces with military video analysis.
Despite this, Google has remained largely unaffected by the internal uproar.
From a financial perspective, the company continues to flourish through revenue obtained through its main sources, primarily digital advertising and a dominant search engine.
