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Google Fires 28 Employees After Multi-City Protests
- richrichie 3y agoPlease answer truthfully. If this sit in were by a group of employees protesting climate change effects of Google’s data-centers and rampant, unrestricted and frivolous training of neural networks by Google employees, will HR do this?
- fasthands9 3y agoYou could also ask what would happen if the group was pro-Trump, pro-life, or anti-affirmative action, all of which are positions with more support than anti-Israel protests. They would also be fired. As awful as these groups are, they generally do not routinely feel entitled to disrupt their own* workspaces. I don't deny your point that a more popular position may get more lenient treatment, but I also can't remember any of these groups attempting this so boldly so seems like a moot point. edit: added "their own" for clarity
- disqard 3y agoI don't know any more details than what I've seen in public news sites. My understanding is that they disrupted office operations. That automatically allows their employer to (rightfully) claim that they broke some fundamental rules of the employee handbook, and therefore forms grounds for termination. Hypothetical: If they (say) held up the lunch line in one of the cafes ("people are starving in Gaza, no one here should eat either" or somesuch reasoning) -- would that also incur such censure? I'd wager the answer is "yes". P.S. If they had gathered in (say) a nearby park, Google would have a much weaker basis for taking such action.
- richrichie 3y agoMy question is if the disruption was in the name of climate change, will they fire them? I bet they won’t dare.
- tedivm 3y agoWhile I see your point, I think the idea that pro-life groups aren't disrupting workplaces is very wrong. Pro-Life groups constantly protest at abortion clinics, where people absolutely do work. Sometimes they even bomb them. Again, I get your point, but that's a very bad example (unless you meant "disrupt their own workspaces") which is a bit different.
- bawolff 3y ago> (unless you meant "disrupt their own workspaces") From context, i think this is obviously what was meant.
- mypalmike 3y agoThis is comparing apples to zebras. Abortion clinic workers aren't protesting abortion clinics.
- fasthands9 3y agoThat is what I meant. An abortion clinic cannot fire you from your job at Google. And Google would not fire people from protesting at an abortion clinic, or from protesting Israel in a public space. If you got hired by an abortion clinic and realized you cannot in good conscious help perform abortions, just leave instead of playing victim. An abortion clinic would fire you if you disrupted the work of helping people receive medical care related to abortions. And Google would fire you if you disrupted the work of Google and its projects.
- darthrupert 3y agoNone of those things seem to be protesting directly at the work they have been hired to do.
- vineyardmike 3y agoMany of them were Google Cloud employees protesting the military use of Google Cloud. So they were protesting their own work's use. (They were also protesting working conditions, which obviously impact employees). Regardless of your view of the actual topic being protested, they were (relatively) peaceful - they staged a "sit in". They disrupted executives - key decision makers - but they didn't directly try to disrupt regular rank-and-file employees who don't have power to make decisions. > Protesters in Sunnyvale sat in [Google Cloud CEO's] office for more than nine hours until their arrests, writing demands on [his] whiteboard and wearing shirts that read “Googler against genocide.” Obviously activism at work will be reprimanded, surely they knew, but it seemed to draw the attention they want. I think we should be careful when we mock or belittle protestors as if they're naive. America has a long history of protesting for (perceived) social good. There aren't many causes I'd risk my cushy job for, but I respect people who make sacrifices for fighting for what they believe in, especially if no one gets hurt.
- quickslowdown 3y agoPinkerton propaganda and slavish devotion to a corporation run deep in America's blood.
- pyuser583 3y agoIf you want to “protest climate chamge”, HR would probably be open to a carefully planned and choreographed event. They might even hire a resident performance artist to have continual “guerilla performance art” raising climate change awareness on the companies dime, with voluntary participation by employees. They would not allow an unplanned and unapproved occupation of executive offices.
- mrkeen 3y agoIt wouldn't have made it to a sit-in. HR would have slurped up all the planning messages and dismissed the trouble makers beforehand.
- pyeri 3y agoTotally deserving after all the heckling, property damage and distress caused to other employees due to their acts. As someone said earlier about this topic, you're supposed to leave your political leanings outside when you enter that gate. Your employer's place is not your political playground to run agendas. It's a transactional and professional relation where you offer a service and get a monthly pay check, that's it.
- quickslowdown 3y agoThis mindset is a pretty convenient way to absolve oneself of any guilt felt over what that service you're offering is contributing to. I also find this reasoning reductive and cynical, for what it's worth.
- hindsightbias 3y agoThey don’t feel any guilt, the transaction abstracts them of any.
- quickslowdown 3y agoThat's what I was saying with my comment, yes
- CydeWeys 3y agoIt doesn't absolve you of guilt whatsoever. If you're feeling lots of guilt over what your employer is doing, then you should resign. There are absolutely companies I would never work for because I morally disagree with what they're doing. Google is not one of them.
- quickslowdown 3y agoI was being pretty sarcastic with my comment, I agree with you, that mentality does not absolve anyone of guilt. I meant that thinking in those terms inoculates the person from feeling the guilt they absolutely should feel over contributing to evil.
- pyuser583 3y agoRemember, your coworkers have to be there. They have to be nice to you. They have to listen to you. Respect that. Work is not an appropriate place for activism. Or bigotry. Or just assholery. Your coworkers aren’t your audience.
- viraptor 3y agoUnless you think that the company does something so bad that you need to bring more attention to it and can't work there anymore in good conscience. Then, just like these employees, go for it - that's exactly the audience. You have to be prepared for the consequences of course. Protests don't work if you do them quietly in your corner without affecting anyone in a meaningful way.
- bleah1000 3y agoI can guarantee you this made more people adverse to the cause than for it. They did everything wrong, and many of the people who might have had a chance at trying to change things are out of Google and will not be able to do anything. It's also likely that people who saw this might now not want to be involved at all for fear of losing their job. This action likely did nothing but make it less likely that anything will change, and been the absolute worst way to attempt to persuade people.
- viraptor 3y agoPeople afraid for their job would be very unlikely to make noise anyway. It's a nice idea about changing things from within a system, but... you have to believe that's possible in the first place. There will be people that do it too, but we won't see articles written about them.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y agoIt made me Google what they were protesting. So it brought some attention. Not enough attention that I won't have forgotten by tomorrow though.
- 3y ago
- darthrupert 3y ago[flagged]
- bawolff 3y agoIts a bold move to try to protest the people signing your paycheque while at work (without a union backing you up)
- toast0 3y agoFrom a brief look at the national labor relation boar's right to strike page[1], an employer could likely fire over a disruptive protest over who the company does business with; union or no. If you need that paycheck, you better check with a labor lawyer first. I'm assuming the protest was disruptive, based on the what was reported in the article and the Google memo. I think it's reasonable to ask someone to leave someone else's office, and expect them to at least leave the office itself. Personally, I'm ok if you want to picket outside the office, as long as you don't impede movement, and if you want to picket outside the building, go ahead. Other people are free to have other ideas about what's appropriate, and I don't expect Google to be supportive of picketing, inside the building or out. But if keeping their job was important to them, finding a different venue than the CTOs office when asked to leave would have been a good step. Getting arrested at work because you won't leave when asked is not usually good for continued employment. [1] https://www.nlrb.gov/strikes https://www.nlrb.gov/strikes
- mvelbaum 3y agoMarc Andreesen had a brilliant post related to this: https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/1780450134188585045 https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/1780450134188585045
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gnabgib 3y agoBiggest discussion:[0](89 points, 2 hours ago, 74 comments) [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40072295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40072295
- nemo44x 3y agoWow the CEO finally grew some balls. Has been such a pushover for years. Trying to be global capitalist empire while entertaining the demands of bratty employees that continuously humiliated him. Good job for a change!
- Ajay-p 3y agoPossibly. There are two ways one can look at the response. When Cloudflare decided to stop working with a company it could be assumed the CEO made a decision that the revenue from that relationship was no longer as important as the social mission or reason to cease doing business. It is possible that the CEO of Google may have considered the economic impact cessation of the service to Israel might cause, and weighed that against employee fallout. It would have been incredible to have been a fly on the wall as Sundar Pichai came to the decision to have the protestors fired/arrested.
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe] More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40072295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40072295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40060532 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40060532
- Log_out_ 3y agoBeating down that protest will cost Google all the independent heads it still had. Nobody ever struck gold with a troupe of slaves bound to a kings court. Nobody even does report gold to dysfunctional organizations.
- MrBurnsKin 3y agoSlaves? They are slaves of the good salary Google pays them
- MrBurnsKin 3y agoFree market. You don't like what your company is doing you are always free to leave. No one should be paying you to complain
- Ajay-p 3y agoWhat disturbs me about these types of protests is that the people involved forget that working for a company is a two-way street. An employee has no more the right or place to dictate to an employer what it can do, as an employer can dictate what its employees do. That's because in America at least, you can leave, you can work some place else. The employer can choose not to work with someone. Protesting employees seem to think they have this pedestal of social justice which gives them some authority over how a company can act. If you don't like it, leave, and when the company can no longer find employees they will change or go out of business.
- proshno 3y ago[dead]