Google has reportedly fired more than 20 employees following sit-in protests at its offices in New York and California, according to a report by The Verge. This comes after the company dismissed 28 employees last week, bringing the total number of employees fired for protesting to nearly 50. The protests were against Google’s $1.2 billion Project Nimbus, a cloud computing project with the Israeli government.
Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, has reminded employees that while the company encourages open debate and discussion, there are limits to this. He urged his employees to refrain from political discussions at work, stating that it is a crucial time for the company.
“This is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics,” Pichai said in a memo.
Google had confirmed the previous dismissals, contradicting claims by ‘No Tech for Apartheid’ that the employees were fired randomly. Nine people were arrested after staging sit-ins at Google offices in New York and Sunnyvale. Pichai stressed that Google is a business and not a platform for disruptive debates or political argumentation.
He reminded employees of their responsibility to ensure the company remains a reliable and impartial information provider.
Google’s global security chief, Chris Rackow, addressed recent protests at the company’s offices that led to the firing of 28 employees. Rackow’s memo stated that the protesting employees’ actions were ‘unacceptable’ and ‘extremely disruptive’, and as a result, they were cut off from company systems and placed under investigation. Rackow warned that Google would not tolerate policy violations and would continue to enforce its standards.
In the memo Rackow stated, “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.”
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