Google fired 28 employees for participating in a 10-hour sit-in at the company’s headquarters in New York and Sunnyvale, California, to protest the company’s business links with the Israeli government.
The pro-Palestine employees held the 10th floor of Google’s offices in Chelsea, Manhattan
The pro-Palestinian employees, who wore traditional Arab headscarves as they stormed and occupied a top executive’s office in California on Tuesday, were fired late Wednesday following an internal investigation, Google vice president of global security Chris Rackow said in a companywide memo.
“They took over office spaces, defaced our property, and physically impeded the work of other Googlers,” Rackow wrote in the memo obtained by The Post. “Their behavior was unacceptable, extremely disruptive, and made co-workers feel threatened.”
Protesters held the 10th floor of Google’s offices in Chelsea, Manhattan, as part of a protest that also extended to the company’s offices in Seattle for what was dubbed the “No Tech for Genocide Day of Action.”
Behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it- Google
“Behavior like this has no place in our workplace, and we will not tolerate it,” Rackow wrote. “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.”
Rackow added that 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.”
The sacked employees are associated with an organization called No Tech for Apartheid, which has criticized Google’s attitude to the Israel-Hamas conflict.
The group posted multiple videos and livestreams of the protests on its X account, including the exact moment when employees were given final warnings and arrested by local police for trespassing.
Critics at the company expressed fear that the technology would be weaponized against Palestinians in Gaza
Protesters have asked that Google withdraw from a $1.2 billion “Project Nimbus” deal, under which Google Cloud and Amazon Web capabilities supply cloud computing and artificial intelligence capabilities to the Israeli government and military.
Critics at the company expressed fear that the technology would be weaponized against Palestinians in Gaza.
In a statement released by No Tech over Apartheid spokesperson Jane Chung, the affected employees slammed Google over the firings.
“This evening, Google indiscriminately fired 28 workers, including those among us who did not directly participate in yesterday’s historic, bicoastal 10-hour sit-in protests,” the workers said in the statement.
“This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers — the ones who create real value for executives and shareholders.”
“Sundar Pichai and Thomas Kurian are genocide profiteers,” the statement added, referring to Google’s CEO and the CEO of its cloud unit, respectively.
“We cannot comprehend how these men are able to sleep at night while their tech has enabled 100,000 Palestinians killed, reported missing, or wounded in the last six months of Israel’s genocide — and counting.”