Google fires 28 employees for protests against the supply of technology to the Israeli army: nine arrested

Google has fired 28 workers who in recent days had organized protest pickets against the company for supplying technology to the Israeli government. Not only that: according to what the Washington Post reports – which takes up the statements of the protesters’ spokeswoman, Jane Chung – nine employees were arrested on Tuesday following the protests […]

Google he fired 28 workers who in recent days had organized meetings protest pickets against the company for the supply of technologies to Israeli government. Not only that: according to what the Washington Post – which takes up the statements of the protesters’ spokesperson, Jane Chung – Tuesday following the protests were arrested nine employees of the offices of New York and of Sunnyvalein California.

“Physically preventing other employees from working and accessing our facilities is a violation of our policies,” the Google spokesperson said Bailey Tomson. The employees, she explained, “have been placed on administrative leave and their access to our systems has been terminated.” Furthermore, in an internal note, the company warned workers: “If you are among the few tempted to think that we will turn a blind eye to behavior that violates our policies, think again.”

The employee sit-ins protested a contract from 1.2 billion dollars called “Project Nimbus” and signed in 2021, which provides for the provision of cloud infrastructure to the Israeli military by Google and Amazon. “We didn’t come to Google to work on technology that kills. By committing to this contract, the company’s leadership has betrayed our trust, our principles on AI, and our humanity,” he wrote on X Billy Van Der Laar, a computer engineer, at the protest. For the group No Tech for Apartheidwho led the protests, the firings were a “blatant act of retaliation“.

See more

The American company is no stranger to this type of protest. Last December, some Google employees released internal emails, protested outside the company offices and organized a “die-in” outside one of the tech giant’s offices in San Francisco blocking traffic on a road. And at the beginning of March Google fired an employee who during a conference in New York had protested during the speech of the company’s top executive in Israel. While in the past, Google employees have opposites also to a contract of the company with the Pentagon which was then suspended.