Google fired more than 20 workers on April 23rd in response to demonstrations in the workplace over the tech company’s ties to the Israeli government.
In response to protests against Project Nimbus, an AI and cloud service deal worth over a billion dollars with the Israeli government, Google has let go dozens from its workforce.
Google and Amazon have agreed to set up a domestic cloud infrastructure in Israel as part of the deal. This will ensure that the data remains inside Israel’s borders and adheres to all security protocols. There is no secret military information involved in the tasks covered by the contract, which pertain to education, healthcare, transportation, and finance.
The organization behind the demonstrations, No Tech For Apartheid, has confirmed that the new wave of layoffs puts the total number of workers fired to at least fifty.
After employees at Google’s California and New York offices staged sit-in demonstrations, tensions inside the firm escalated. Several people were taken into custody when Google contacted the authorities in response to the protests, and it then announced the termination of 30 employees.
No Tech For Apartheid spokeswoman Jane Chung said that some who were fired recently weren’t even involved in the demonstrations. Chung said that Google attempted to regulate its employees and silence dissent without following proper procedures. Chung alleged Google has chosen to disrupt the lifestyles of more than fifty of its employees in an ‘unprofessional’ manner.
Google denied the group’s charges and maintained that all terminations were justifiable since the employees were found to have engaged in disruptive conduct when they should have been working.
Google has justified its decision, claiming it carried out an extensive investigation that showed the fired workers were disruptive, with some wearing masks and not carrying their ID badges to conceal their identities.
