Google is facing backlash from workers and activists after firing 28 employees who staged a sit-in over a contract with Israel.
On Tuesday, employees staged a sit-in in Google’s Silicon Valley and New York offices, demanding an end to the controversial Project Nimbus — a $1.2 billion contract between the Israeli government and Google and Amazon.
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, a Google spokeswoman said the company had carefully reviewed the situation and everyone involved in the protest. The actions of the protesters extended beyond protesting activities and actively disrupted the company, executives held.
“Every single one of the twenty-eight people whose employment was terminated was personally and definitively involved in disruptive activity inside our buildings,” a Google spokeswoman said. “We carefully confirmed every single one (and then actually reconfirmed each one) during our investigation. The groups were live-streaming themselves from the physical spaces they had taken over for many hours, which did help us with our confirmation. And many employees whose work was physically disrupted submitted complaints, with details and evidence. So the claims to the contrary being made are just nonsense.”
She also dismissed concerns about Project Nimbus, disputing claims by activists that Google was “funding genocide.”
“Google Cloud supports numerous governments around the world in countries where we operate, including the Israeli government, with our generally available cloud computing services,” the statement reads. “We have been very clear that the Nimbus contract is for workloads running on our commercial cloud by Israeli government ministries, who agree to comply with our Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy. This work is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.”
All those who partook in the protests and were fired were members of the No Tech for Apartheid group, NPR reported. Over 100 people altogether took part in the protest.
One of the participants, Zelda Montes, told the outlet that she was shocked by her firing and that it represents a major misstep from the company.
“Google was quite literally silencing our voices in the workplace and not allowing for any kind of worker dissent to be expressed around the project,” she said.
Previously, Montes also disputed Google’s claim that Project Nimbus had no military use.
“Some of our concerns as organizers with No Tech for Apartheid is that Google has made various duplicitous claims saying that this isn’t a military contract,” she said. “Except we already know that the Israeli occupation forces are leaders in this contract as well as beneficiaries of them. There’s already been news coverage that says that Google isn’t allowed to restrict any parts of the entity like any entities of the government from accessing their software, so they can’t even necessarily say that.”
Despite the firing, Montes vowed to continue her actions against the project until it was dropped.
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“Workers are agitated and we’re organized. … We’ll keep organizing until this project is dropped,” she told NPR.
The Washington Examiner reached out to No Tech for Apartheid for comment.
