look news india
New York: Google said Thursday it has fired 28 employees after some took part in protests against the company's cloud contract with the Israeli government. The Alphabet unit said a small number of protesting employees entered some unspecified office locations and disrupted work.
“Physically disrupting the work of other employees and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior,” the company said in a statement.
Google said it has concluded individual investigations, resulting in the termination of 28 employees, and will continue to investigate and take action as necessary.
In a statement on Medium, Google employees associated with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign called it a “major act of retaliation” and said that some employees who did not directly participate in Tuesday's protests were also among those fired by Google. Were.
“Google employees have the right to peacefully protest about our labor terms and conditions,” the statement said.
The protest group says Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract awarded to Google and Amazon.com in 2021 to supply cloud services to the Israeli government, supports the development of military equipment by the Israeli government.
In its statement, Google said the Nimbus contract is “not directed at highly sensitive, classified or military workloads related to weapons or intelligence services.”
Protest at Google is nothing new. In 2018, workers successfully pushed the company to conclude a contract with the US military, Project Maven, aimed at analyzing aerial drone imagery with potential application in warfare.