Dozens of Google workers who were fired after protests over the tech company’s lucrative contract with the Israeli government filed a complaint with labor regulators on Monday in a bid to get their jobs back.
The complaint filed Monday night with the National Labor Relations Board alleges that about 50 workers were wrongfully terminated or placed on administrative leave earlier this month as a result of employee sit-ins that occurred at Google offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California.
Initially, a group of about 28 workers from the two locations were fired after protesting at Google’s facilities on April 16. About 20 more employees were fired the following week.
The protests targeted a $1.2 billion deal known as Project Nimbus, which provides artificial intelligence technology to the Israeli government. The dismissed workers say the system makes it easier for the Israeli government and its military to monitor Palestinians and force them off their land in Gaza.
Google has said Nimbus is not being used for weapons or intelligence gathering.
Google ruled out the workers’ “participation (or perception of participation) in a peaceful, non-disruptive protest that was directly and explicitly related to their terms and conditions of employment.”
Some employees say many of the fired workers had not even entered Google’s offices during the protests. A Google spokesperson told JOBsNews Bay Area that the fired employees were personally and definitely involved in the disruption.
“As we indicated, we are continuing our investigation into the physical disruption within our buildings on April 16, looking into additional details provided by the coworkers who were physically disturbed, as well as those employees who took longer to identify themselves because their identity was partially obscured, such as by wearing a mask without their badge, while engaging in the disruption,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “Our investigation into these events has now concluded, and we have terminated the additional employees who were found to have been directly involved in the disruptive activity. To reiterate, each of the employees whose employment was terminated was personally and definitively involved in the disruptive activity within our buildings. We carefully confirmed and reconfirmed this.”
The company issued an additional statement to JOBsNews Bay Area on Wednesday, saying, “This is a very clear case of employees disrupting and occupying work spaces, and making other employees feel threatened and unsafe. By any measure, their behavior was completely unacceptable, and widely viewed as such. We have carefully confirmed and reconfirmed that each of the individuals whose employment was terminated was directly and definitively involved in disruptions within our buildings. We are confident in our position and stand by the actions we have taken.”
The National Labor Relations Board did not immediately set a timetable for reviewing the case.
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