Google fires 28 workers protesting over contract with Israel, issues stern warning to employees

Google employees fired

It was reported yesterday that nine Google employees were arrested after staging sit-in protests in company’s offices in New York and California. The employees were protesting against a cloud project Google is involved in with the Israel government. Now, Google has fired 28 employees for sit-in protests, according to a report by The Verge.

Chris Rackow, head of security, Google sent a memo to all employees where he warned and said that “behaviour like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it.”

“Their behaviour was unacceptable, extremely disruptive, and made coworkers feel threatened. We placed employees involved under investigation and cut their access to our systems,” Rackow said.

“Today we terminated the employment of twenty-eight employees found to be involved. We will continue to investigate and take action as needed,” Rackow told employees in the memo, as per The Verge.

He further said that every employee should know how to conduct themselves in world place and that the overwhelming majority of employees do the right thing. “If you’re one of the few who are tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again,” he said in a stern warning to all employees.

The protestors — and presumably the sacked employees — were against a $1.2 billion contract Google has with Israel to provide cloud services and data centres. According to the report, the protestors said that they would only leave when Google pulls out of the deal. The contract — known as Nimbus — was signed by Google in 2021.