Google, one of the world’s largest companies, has been grappling with growing activism within sections of its 180,000+ workforce seeking among other things overhauls on pay, harassment and ethics by the company. In a latest run-in over the company’s Nimbus Cloud contract with various ministries of the Israeli government, Google has fired 28 employees involved in persistent protests and obstructions despite warnings from the company’s top leadership.
The strict action follows several employees participating in sit-ins at the company’s New York and Sunnyvale, California offices. Nine staffers were arrested by the police a day earlier on charges of trespass at the two offices after being reported by the company.
Google has sternly warned that physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing the company’s facilities is a clear violation of its policies, and completely unacceptable behavior.
According to media reports, tensions had been brewing between the company’s top leadership and a well knit section of activist employees over Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion deal between Google and Amazon to supply the Israeli government with cloud services, including artificial intelligence, which the protesting employees allege will aid Israel’s military.
The rift has widened to a gulf since the war in Gaza strip began in October 2023 following the most devastating multi pronged lightening terror attack by Hamas and other outfits on southern Israel, which left 1700 people, including 600 soldiers of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) and 60 policemen, dead and hundreds of others injured. An unspecified number of people were also kidnapped by the attackers and held hostage in the Gaza strip.
The brutal full scale retaliatory war unleashed by Israel on the Gaza strip has triggered a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented proportions in the Palestinian territory with an estimated 33,000+ people killed in Gaza and 76,000 others wounded and lakhs staring at starvation.
While Google asserted that it had terminated the 28 employees after concluding individual investigations, the activist employees described the company action as a “flagrant act of retaliation” and alleged that some employees who did not directly participate in the protests were also among those fired.
