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Article

18 Apr 2024

Author:
No Tech for Apartheid (via Medium)

STATEMENT from Google workers with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign on Google’s mass, retaliatory firings of workers

Phil Pasquini, Shutterstock

San Francisco, CA – September 8, 2022: Activists demonstrated against project "Nimbus," an Amazon and Google Cloud services surveillance program for Israel government and military.

This evening, Google indiscriminately fired over two dozen workers, including those among us who did not directly participate in yesterday’s historic, bicoastal 10-hour sit-in protests. This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers. In the three years that we have been organizing against Project Nimbus, we have yet to hear from a single executive about our concerns. Google workers have the right to peacefully protest about terms and conditions of our labor. These firings were clearly retaliatory.

On the contrary, our bosses called the police on its own workers, the Nimbus Nine, who were arrested and taken into custody last night. Today, they punished all of the workers they could associate with this action in wholesale firings, through a dragnet of in-office surveillance. Google cited “bullying” and “harassment” as the reasons for workers’ firing. If there has been any bullying or harassment at the company, our Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim colleagues have been the recipients.

[...]

Google continues to lie to its workers, the media, and the public. Google continues to claim, as of today, that Project Nimbus is “not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.” Yet, reporting from TIME Magazine proves otherwise: Google has built custom tools for Israel’s Ministry of “Defense,” and has doubled down on contracting with the Israeli Occupation Forces, since the start of its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. By continuing its lies, Google is blatantly disrespecting and disregarding consumers, the media, as well as, most importantly, its workers.

[...]

Sundar Pichai and Thomas Kurian are genocide profiteers. We cannot comprehend how these men are able to sleep at night while their tech has enabled 100,000 Palestinians killed, reported missing, or wounded in the last six months of Israel’s genocide — and counting.

The truth is clear: Google is terrified of us. They are terrified of workers coming together and calling for accountability and transparency from our bosses. They are choosing to reveal the falsity of Google’s “open culture” in order to get rid of a threat. The corporation is trying to downplay and discredit our power.

These mass, illegal firings will not stop us. On the contrary, they only serve as further fuel for the growth of this movement.

Make no mistake, we will continue organizing until the company drops Project Nimbus and stops powering this genocide.