Google announced on Thursday that it had terminated 28 employees following protests by some staff against the company’s cloud contract with the Israeli government.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, stated that a small group of protesting employees disrupted work at several unspecified office locations.
“Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior,” the company stated in a release.
Google stated that it had completed individual inquiries, leading to the dismissal of 28 employees, and affirmed its commitment to ongoing investigations and appropriate actions.
In a statement, on Medium, Google workers affiliated with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign called it a “flagrant act of retaliation” and said that some employees who did not directly participate in Tuesday’s protests were also among those Google fired.
In a statement published on Medium, Google employees associated with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign labeled it as a “flagrant act of retaliation”. They also mentioned that some employees who were not directly involved in Tuesday’s protests were among those terminated by Google.
The statement emphasized that Google employees have the right to peacefully protest regarding the terms and conditions of their employment.
The protesting group alleges that Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract given to Google and Amazon.com in 2021 to provide cloud services to the Israeli government, aids in the creation of military tools by the Israeli government.
However, Google stated in its release that the Nimbus contract “does not involve highly sensitive, classified, or military tasks related to weaponry or intelligence services.”
