Google sacked 28 employees on Wednesday following demonstrations over working conditions and the company's deal to supply cloud computing and AI services to the Israeli government and military, according to an internal memo accessed by CNBC.
The news comes one day after nine Google employees were detained for trespassing during a sit-in at the company's offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, including a protest in Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian's office.
Some of the jailed workers in New York and Sunnyvale told CNBC earlier on Wednesday that during the demonstration, they were locked out of their work accounts and offices, placed on administrative leave, and warned not to return to work until contacted by HR.
On Wednesday evening, Chris Rackow, Google's vice president of worldwide security, released an email informing Google employees that "following an investigation, today we terminated the employment of twenty-eight employees found to be involved." We will continue to investigate and take action as necessary."
The arrests, which participants livestreamed on Twitch, come after hundreds of people attended rallies outside Google offices in New York, Sunnyvale, and Seattle, according to workers engaged. The "No Tech for Apartheid" movement led the protests, which centered on Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract between Google and Amazon to offer cloud computing services to the Israeli government and military, including AI tools, data centers, and other cloud infrastructure.
"This evening, Google indiscriminately fired over two dozen workers, including those among us who did not directly participate in yesterday's historic, bicoastal 10-hour sit-in protests," No Tech for Apartheid said in a statement. "In the three years that we have been organizing against Project Nimbus, we have yet to hear from a single executive about our concerns. Google employees have the right to peacefully protest their working circumstances. "These firings were obviously retaliatory."
Protesters in Sunnyvale sat outside Kurian's office for over nine hours before being arrested, writing requests on the whiteboard and wearing shirts that read "Googler against genocide." Protesters in New York sat in a three-story communal space. Five employees from Sunnyvale and four from New York
"On a personal level, I am opposed to Google accepting any military contracts, regardless of which government is involved or what the contract is about," Cheyne Anderson, a Google Cloud software developer stationed in Washington, told CNBC earlier on Wednesday. "And I hold that opinion because Google is an international company and no matter which military it's with, there are always going to be people on the receiving end... represented in Google's employee base and also our user base." Anderson had flown to Sunnyvale for the protest at Kurian's office and was among the workers arrested on Tuesday.
"Google Cloud supports numerous governments around the world in countries where we operate, including the Israeli government, with our generally available cloud computing services," a spokesperson for Google said to CNBC on Wednesday. She added, "This work is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services."
The demonstrations demonstrate Google's growing pressure from employees who oppose the military's use of its AI and cloud technology. Last month, Google Cloud engineer Eddie Hatfield stopped a keynote lecture by the managing director of Google's Israel division, declaring, "I refuse to build technology that powers genocide." Hatfield was eventually fired. That same week, an internal Google employee message board was deactivated when employees expressed concerns about the company's Israeli military contracts. A spokesman at the time called the posts "divisive content that is disruptive to our workplace."
against October 7, Hamas launched horrific attacks against Israel, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping more than 240 more. The next day, Israel declared war and imposed a siege on Gaza, cutting off access to power, food, water, and gasoline. Since then, at least 33,899 individuals have been murdered in the Gaza Strip, according to a Telegram statement sent Wednesday by the enclave's Health Ministry. In January, Israel rejected genocide claims made by South Africa before the United Nations' top court.
According to reports, the Israeli Ministry of Defense sought Google's consultancy services to increase its access to Google Cloud services. According to The New York Times, the Israeli government uses Google Photos as one of its surveillance platforms in Gaza.
"I think what happened yesterday is evidence that Google's attempts to suppress all of the voices of opposition to this contract are not only not working, but actually having the opposite effect," Ariel Koren, a former Google employee who resigned in 2022 after leading efforts to oppose the Project Nimbus contract, told CNBC earlier on Wednesday. "It's really just creating more agitation, more anger and more commitment."
The New York sit-in began at midday ET and concluded around 9:30 p.m. ET. Around an hour into the protest, security requested workers to take down their two-story banner, according to Hasan Ibraheem, a Google software engineer based in New York City and one of the jailed workers.
"I realized, 'Oh, the place that I work is very complicit and aiding in this genocide — I have a responsibility to act against it,'" Ibraheem told CNBC earlier Wednesday. He went on to say, "The fact that I am receiving money from Google and Israel is paying Google — I am receiving part of that money, and that weighed very heavily on me."
The New York employees were freed from the police station after nearly four hours.
The workers were also protesting their working conditions, namely "that the company stop the harassment, intimidation, bullying, silencing, and censorship of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim Googlers — and that the company address the health and safety crisis workers, especially those in Google Cloud, are facing due to the potential impacts of their work," according to a campaign release.
"A small number of employee protesters entered and disrupted a few of our locations," a Google representative told CNBC Wednesday evening. "Physically hindering other employees' work and stopping them from using our facilities is a blatant violation of our standards, and it is entirely unacceptable. After ignoring several demands to leave the premises, law enforcement was called in to remove them to guarantee office safety. We have completed individual investigations that have resulted in the termination of 28 workers, and we will continue to investigate and take action as necessary."
Read the full memo below.
Googlers,
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 co-workers 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.
You should expect to hear more from leaders about standards of behavior and discourse in the workplace.
Chris
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