TechDigits

Tech news
Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Four Engineers Allege Google Fired Them For Speaking Up. Now They Want The NLRB To Investigate.

Four Engineers Allege Google Fired Them For Speaking Up. Now They Want The NLRB To Investigate.

A group of former Google employees who were terminated last month are hoping their complaints about unfair labor practices will trigger a federal investigation into the search giant.
Four recently fired Google engineers who were active in company worker movements say they will push for a federal investigation into the search and advertising giant for unfair labor practices.

On Tuesday, the four former employees announced their intent to file charges with the National Labor Relations Board for what they allege was retaliation from the company against their roles in organizing workers. Two of those employees had been on leave and spoke up during an employee protest at Google’s San Francisco offices last month, while two others had not publicly revealed their names until Tuesday. All four were terminated last week.

“We participated in legally protected labor organizing, fighting to improve workplace conditions for all Google workers,” read a letter penned by Laurence Berland, Rebecca Rivers, Paul Duke, and Sophie Waldman. "Google didn’t respond by honoring its values, or abiding by the law. It responded like a large corporation more interested in revenue growth than in ensuring worker rights and ethical conduct."

A Google spokesperson responded: "We dismissed four individuals who were engaged in intentional and often repeated violations of our longstanding data security policies, including systematically accessing and disseminating other employees’ materials and work. No one has been dismissed for raising concerns or debating the company’s activities."
The firings, which happened the Monday before Thanksgiving, came during a fraught two and a half years at Google, in which groups of employees have protested against contracts with the military, plans for search in China, payouts to executives accused of sexual misconduct, and more recently, the company’s work with US Customs and Border Patrol. Among labor organizers at the company, the firings were seen as a crackdown by Google management and an attempt to rein in the company’s once open, speak-your-mind culture.

Last month, the New York Times reported that Google had hired a consulting firm that specializes in anti-unionization efforts, while the company, in light of the unrest, canceled future all-hands meetings which employees had used to pose questions to leadership. For Berland, a site reliability engineer who had worked at Google for more than 10 years, the changes indicated that the executives making decisions at Google were “opposed to any sharing of power, on any terms.”

“It’s pretty typical that those with concentrations of power don’t want to give it up, at any cost, but is that what’s best for Google? For its shareholders? For its users?” he asked in an interview with BuzzFeed News. “It’s certainly not the best for the workers, and I think many of us feel that we as workers are well-positioned to ensure that our workplace remains a place that honors all of that.”

A Google spokesperson declined to answer specific questions, though a widely reported internal memo written at the time of the firings suggested that the employees had accessed information “outside the scope of their jobs” that was then later leaked to the press. Other alleged activity, which included the examination of other employees’ calendars, created a working environment that made others feel unsafe, the memo said.

The spokesperson said that the four individuals, who they declined to name, were fired for violating rules on data security and in the company’s code of conduct, noting that it was against Google's rules to obtain, copy, or share information deemed "confidential" or "need-to-know."

In an interview on Monday, the employees pushed back on those allegations. All four denied leaking information, with Waldman, a former engineer at Google’s Cambridge, Massachusetts, office, noting that she sent reminders to other organizers specifically not to do so. Waldman and Berland didn’t deny that they accessed information outside the purview of their jobs, but noted that these actions were not against Google policy and that the information was available to anyone at the company.

“Viewing of others’ calendars, documents, etc., is a longstanding tradition at Google, very intentionally, and Google provides users, including employees, a wide range of access control features to limit things when needed,” Berland said. The fired employees added that under this policy, they were able to access and view company documents that pertained to Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) that had not been limited by higher-ups, but maintained that they did not share them externally.

Duke, an engineer who worked for Google for eight years, most recently out of its New York office, likened his “interrogation” and firing to McCarthyism. He became active in the internal push to prevent Google from working with CBP and had been previously been interviewed by the company’s internal security team in September before being abruptly fired last month.

“This is about the company being scared about worker power,” he said. “It’s being scared of workers demanding accountability or a say in what they’re working on -even a right to know what they’re working on.”

In August, more than 1,300 employees signed a petition that asked the company to not provide cloud services to CBP, which Google executives reportedly allowed to test a new product for free. That relationship led to further employee questions about the company’s ties to the federal government, including its hiring of a former Department of Homeland Security senior staffer who previously defended a version of the travel ban against citizens of Muslim-majority countries and the family separation policy at the US–Mexico border.

Google management would go on to censor questions about the former DHS staffer’s hiring ahead of an all-hands meeting in October and later canceled all future company-wide meetings. Last month, Berland and Rivers, who by then had been placed on leave by the company, spoke to a crowd of more than 100 protesters outside of the company’s San Francisco office, decrying the erosion of Google’s open culture.

“I want to believe that it still is possible,” Rivers said when asked if the company could return to an environment where employees wouldn’t fear retaliation for speaking up. “But it will only be possible if we see a real, credible change in executive leadership, and a push to engage more with employee concerns.”

For now, they’ll have to push for change from the outside. The group, which was originally known as the “Thanksgiving Four” before ditching the name out of concerns regarding its association with a colonialist holiday, said it will file charges with the NLRB later this week. A regional director with the agency will then have to determine whether the charges are worth investigating.

In September, the company previously settled with the NLRB over accusations that the company had prevented employees from discussing workplace issues. It did not have to admit any wrongdoing.

“Google fails to understand that workers are the ones who built the company and its most successful products,” read the fired employees’ letter. “And that we can stop building them. No company -tech giant or otherwise -should be able to interfere with workers’ rights to organize for better working conditions, including ethical business practices.”
Newsletter

Related Articles

TechDigits
0:00
0:00
Close
FTX's Bankman-Fried headed for jail after judge revokes bail
America's First New Nuclear Reactor in Nearly Seven Years Begins Operations
Southeast Asia moves closer to economic unity with new regional payments system
Today Hunter Biden’s best friend and business associate, Devon Archer, testified that Joe Biden met in Georgetown with Russian Moscow Mayor's Wife Yelena Baturina who later paid Hunter Biden $3.5 million in so called “consulting fees”
Google testing journalism AI. We are doing it already 2 years, and without Google biased propoganda and manipulated censorship
Musk announces Twitter name and logo change to X.com
The future of sports
TikTok Takes On Spotify And Apple, Launches Own Music Service
Hacktivist Collective Anonymous Launches 'Project Disclosure' to Unearth Information on UFOs and ETIs
Typo sends millions of US military emails to Russian ally Mali
Server Arrested For Theft After Refusing To Pay A Table's $100 Restaurant Bill When They Dined & Dashed
Democracy not: EU's Digital Commissioner Considers Shutting Down Social Media Platforms Amid Social Unrest
Sarah Silverman and Renowned Authors Lodge Copyright Infringement Case Against OpenAI and Meta
Why Do Tech Executives Support Kennedy Jr.?
The New York Times Announces Closure of its Sports Section in Favor of The Athletic
Florida Attorney General requests Meta CEO's testimony on company's platforms' alleged facilitation of illicit activities
The Poor Man With Money, Mark Zuckerberg, Unveils Twitter Replica with Heavy-Handed Censorship: A New Low in Innovation?
The Double-Edged Sword of AI: AI is linked to layoffs in industry that created it
US Sanctions on China's Chip Industry Backfire, Prompting Self-Inflicted Blowback
Meta Copy Twitter with New App, Threads
BlackRock Bitcoin ETF Application Refiled, Naming Coinbase as ‘Surveillance-Sharing’ Partner
UK Crypto and Stablecoin Regulations Become Law as Royal Assent is Granted
A Delaware city wants to let businesses vote in its elections
Alef Aeronautics Achieves Historic Milestone with Flight Certification for World's First Flying Car
Google Blocked Access to Canadian News in Response to New Legislation
French Politicians Advocate for Pan-European Regulation on Social Media Influencers
Melinda French Gates Advocates for Increased Female Representation in AI to Prevent Bias
Snapchat+ gains 4 million paying subscribers in its first year
Apple Makes History as the First Public Company Valued at $3 Trillion
Elon Musk Implements Twitter Limits to Tackle Data Scraping, but Faces Criticism for Technical Misunderstanding
EU and UK's Slow Electric Vehicle Adoption Raises Questions About the Transition to Green Mobility
Top Companies Express Concerns Over Europe's Proposed AI Law, Citing Competitiveness and Investment Risks
Meta Unveils Insights on AI Usage in Facebook and Instagram, Amid Growing Calls for Transparency
Crypto Scams Against Seniors Soar by 78% in 2022, Experts Urge Vigilance
The End of an Era: National Geographic Dismisses Last of Its Staff Writers
Shield Your Wallet: The Perils of Wireless Credit Card Theft
Harvard Scientist Who Studies Honesty Accused Of Data Fraud, Put On Leave
Putting an End to the Subscription Snare: The Battle Against Unwitting Commitments
The Legal Perils of AI: Lawyer Faces Sanctions for Relying on Fictional Cases Generated by Chatbot
ChatGPT’s "Grandma Exploit": Ingenious Hack Exposes Loophole in AI, Generates Free Software Codes
The Disney Downturn: A Near Billion-Dollar Box Office Blow for the House of Mouse
A Digital Showdown: Canada Challenges Tech Giants with The Online News Act, Meta Strikes Back
Distress in the Depths: Submersible and Passengers Missing in Titanic Wreckage Expedition
Mark Zuckerberg stealing another idea: Twitter
European Union's AI Regulations Risk Self-Sabotage, Cautions smart and brave Venture Capitalist Joe Lonsdale
Nvidia GPUs are so hard to get that rich venture capitalists are buying them for the startups they invest in
Chinese car exports surge
Reddit Blackout: Thousands of Communities Protest "Ludicrous" Pricing Changes
Nvidia Joins Tech Giants as First Chipmaker to Reach $1 Trillion Valuation
AI ‘extinction’ should be same priority as nuclear war – experts
×