27 ms·

Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

205 points by lladnar 2y ago

mvdtnz 2y ago
National Labor Relations Board, in case you're wondering. The author doesn't bother to define it until the 12th paragraph.
- greenie_beans 2y ago
  it's' in your interest to know that acronym, whether your a laborer or owner.
  - nolongerthere 2y ago
    You assume everyone lives and works in the US. If you’re not then you have no idea that that is.
    - greenie_beans 2y ago
      fair point! i do assume that. and i expect a US-based publisher to also assume that about their audience.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
Centigonal 2y ago
> This is a marked departure from the way Google has handled employee dissent in the past. In 2018, more than 600 Google workers signed an open letter opposing Project Dragonfly, an effort to build a search engine for China. As The Verge reported at the time, the petition began with an internally shared Google Doc, and all subsequent steps were also organized using Google products. Employees also urged Google to drop Project Maven, its contract with the US Department of Defense. That same year, over 20,000 Google employees staged a walkout in protest of the company’s handling of sexual harassment allegations against executives. [...] > “There’s been a total change in the way Google responds to employees trying to have a voice in their workplace,” the fired software engineer said. “It’s night and day from the Google of even five, 10 years ago.” This is the most interesting part of the article for me. Google's approach today, versus how it reacted to the backlash against Maven in 2018, reflects a very different company with a different attitude toward the opinions of its employees.
- asib 2y ago
  It doesn't actually say anything about how Google handled those employee demonstrations though... Were they less draconian?
- rufus_foreman 2y ago
  >> Google's approach today, versus how it reacted to the backlash against Maven in 2018, reflects a very different company with a different attitude toward the opinions of its employees I guess that's one possibility. Another possibility is that the owners and board of Google have a very different attitude towards protests in favor of Palestinians than the owners and board of Google had towards other protests in the past.
  - nailer 2y ago
    These protests aren’t in favour of Palestinians, they’re specifically against Israel, and empower and excuse a racist death cult that has taken over Gaza.
- b112 2y ago
  One bit of info... this is an employer's market. 2108 was an employee's market.
- lolinder 2y ago
  Did Google change, or was this protest substantially different in character? In the reporting TFA links to about Maven I don't see any sign of employees staging disruptive protests on Google property. This is how Gizmodo describes that protest [0]: > Google’s decision to provide artificial intelligence to the Defense Department for the analysis of drone footage has prompted backlash from Google employees and academics. Thousands of employees have signed a petition asking Google to cancel its contract for the project, nicknamed Project Maven, and dozens of employees have resigned in protest. A petition signed by thousands and a bunch of resignations are very different than staging a sit in in an executive's office and refusing to leave when asked. And both of the protests referred to in the past (Maven and sexual harassment) seem to have had a much stronger base of support than the 20-50 people who participated in this. Is it possible that Google is the same Google and these people have gotten caught up in unreasonable post-2020 expectations for what valid political expression in the workplace looks like? [0] https://gizmodo.com/google-plans-not-to-renew-its-contract-for-project-mave-1826488620 https://gizmodo.com/google-plans-not-to-renew-its-contract-f...
PierceJoy 2y ago
I’m assuming at will employment makes this very unlikely to be successful.
- papercrane 2y ago
  At will employment doesn't matter here. Even with at-will employment it is illegal to fire employees for some reasons. For example, it's generally against the law to fire employees for discussing their work conditions. I think the employees will have a difficult case here, but it is conceivable that some of them might. For example I could see the NLRB ruling in favor of an employee who was fired after for expressing concern about a project with Israel, but I think the employees who staged a sit-in probably don't have a case.
- AnotherGoodName 2y ago
  Well you can't fire people for political reasons. It's a protected category. So the crux of it will likely depend on if there's similar protests from opposing viewpoints that were not dealt with similarly. Eg. If there were any counter protestors at the same event that weren't also fired that's a reasonably clear cut case of firing a group for political views.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - zeroonetwothree 2y ago
    Political affiliation is not a protected class. California law does restrict employers from punishing employees for their political activities, but this generally applies to activities done outside of work.
ActorNightly 2y ago
[flagged]
- Georgelemental 2y ago
  > where the most prominent voices in the movement support Hamas I suppose that depends on your definition of "the movement". But I am close friends with one of the activist leaders for divesting from Israeli government-linked companies on my university campus—and they're Jewish. So I'm personally skeptical of the scaremongering propaganda
  - zeroCalories 2y ago
    Are you suggesting that there aren't Jews that support Hamas? I've known plenty of Uncle Toms and Kapos in my life.
    - Georgelemental 2y ago
      > there aren't Jews that support Hamas There are around 16 million Jews in the world, I'm sure you can find one or two to support more or less anything. But the Uncle Tom/Kapo analogy doesn't work; there are no Jews under Hamas rule (other than the hostages ofc) so there is no incentive for any of them to betray their people in that way.
      - zeroCalories 2y ago
        Of course there is an incentive. You get to reap social capital and get high on your own perceived holiness. Do you think someone like Norman Finkelstein would be so popular if he wasn't a Jew? Or Candace Owens black?
        Georgelemental 2y ago
        Where in the world (outside Gaza) does explicitly supporting Hamas (as opposed to opposing war crimes) "reap social capital"?
worried4future 2y ago
The meat of it is here: > Google “retaliated against approximately 50 employees and interfered with their Section 7 rights by terminating and/or placing them on administrative leave in response to their protected concerted activity, namely, participation (or perceived participation) in a peaceful, non-disruptive protest that was directly and explicitly connected to their terms and conditions of work,” the complaint reads. Seems very thin to call on the NLRA here. The "protesters" stated goals were to disrupt work even for people not a member of the non-union (therefore not a strike) which is not a protected activity. Moreover, were any of these employees or any members of the minority union actually working on the Israeli contracts they objected to? While you can protest against your job duties under the NLRA (or job duties of your collective union members) I don't see that you can protest against company functions which aren't job duties you or your class aren't a part of. If the workers had just walked off the job and peacefully and non-disruptively protested in front of the building and refused to go back to their job until they (or other members of the minority union) had their job duties modified so they were not working on those projects and google had fired them, that seems like it would violate the NLRA. Anyway this seems like some fun FAFO. I wonder how many of the people who got fired were even members of the non-union before the "protest".
- Simulacra 2y ago
  It depends. Given the administrations position on such things right now, the NLRA could be used as a intimidation club against Google to settle.
- davidf18 2y ago
  [dead]
- toast0 2y ago
  I mean, go ahead and file a complaint, right? But my read of the situation while skimming the NLRB summary [1] is this complaint is unlikely to win > Strikes unlawful because of misconduct of strikers or other loss of protection. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a “sitdown” strike, when employees simply stay in the plant and refuse to work is not protected by the law. This feels pertinent, but not a whole match. > Furthermore, Section 8(b)(4) of the Act prohibits strikes for certain objects even though the objects are not necessarily unlawful if achieved by other means. An example of this would be a strike to compel Employer A to cease doing business with Employer B. It is not unlawful for Employer A voluntarily to stop doing business with Employer B, nor is it unlawful for a union merely to request that it do so. It is, however, unlawful for the union to strike with an object of forcing the employer to do so. These points will be covered in more detail in the explanation of Section 8(b)(4). In any event, employees who participate in an unlawful strike may be discharged and are not entitled to reinstatement. On the summary page, this looks like striking to prevent their employer from doing business with another employer (IDF) and might apply, but further reading seems to indicate this is about striking to not do business with a non-union employer, which isn't actually relevant. But either way, it's not clear to me that striking about who your employer does business with is a 'lawful' strike. [1] https://www.nlrb.gov/strikes https://www.nlrb.gov/strikes
xyst 2y ago
Has anybody noticed that whenever the protests pop up. Major news outlets tend to spin them as some sort of haven for “anti-Semitism” or cite them as the “violent protests”. I have yet to see organizations (at least on the ground, in major press releases) cite anything that represents hate against the Jewish population. Only rhetoric I have heard is those protesting the horrific actions of the Israeli government/military and the US governments enabling of those actions. Horrific actions by the Israeli government so far (at least since the Hamas raid): indiscriminate bombing in Gaza, bombing of hospitals, many civilians impacted and from what I gather most are underage children. Some American-Israelis at these protests (some even young adults in college) keep repeating the rhetoric by the media as well. Have seen some students say these protests are rampant with anti-Semitic rants and that these protests “want to get rid of them [Jewish students]” Again, I have been to a few of these protests (especially the ones in TX) and have yet to see anything of this sort. I have unfortunately seen people sitting on lawns not resisting law enforcement get their faces smashed into the ground by state troopers. Is the Israeli political machine just very effective? Or am I the delusional one ignoring the obvious? If it’s the latter, please point me to evidence of pro-Palestine organizations supporting the violent actions of Hamas terrorists. I don’t want to see individuals that have no visible ties spouting bullshit. There should be a press release by the orgs or leaders of these orgs stating this as such. So far I have come up empty as far as credible sources.
- slantedview 2y ago
  > Has anybody noticed that whenever the protests pop up. Major news outlets tend to spin them as some sort of haven for “anti-Semitism” or cite them as the “violent protests”. Yes. The reason for this is that people who oppose the protests, and effectively support what officials at the UN are calling an ongoing genocide, cannot win any argument on its merits. So the only thing they can do is paint the protesters as antisemitic, even though many protesters are Jewish. It's pathetic but effective, for now.
- the_gastropod 2y ago
  This is how it always seems to go. A huge segment of Americans still refer to the George Floyd protests as "George Floyd Riots" that "burned down" cities. It's, obviously, a ridiculous characterization of an overwhelmingly peaceful nation-wide set of protests.
manlobster 2y ago
Googler protests in the past have typically been walk-outs and other outdoor gatherings. This protest took place within the offices. Some of the protestors occupied senior executives' offices for many hours, and had to be removed by the police. Some of the protestors also streamed their protest from within the offices of the notoriously confidentiality-obsessed company. I don't buy the narrative that Google is cracking down on employee activism. It seems more like the activists in this instance went too far and were dealt with accordingly.
- llm_nerd 2y ago
  I think it's fair to say that Google is cracking down. They did tolerate activities like this previously, but came down like a hammer on this. It seems like they are setting a precedent and giving fair warning to anyone else thinking of doing something similar. Things like this can be viral, as seen with the college protests. And the more enabled they are, the worse they get, as seen with Columbia. And to be fair there has been a big shift in the market for tech workers. There was a sort of indispensable aura that protected tech employees before that just isn't there any more. People who think this sort of thing wouldn't yield a rapid firing are living in the past. There is a video from the participants- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLiWHO71fOU&lc= https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLiWHO71fOU&lc= I find it rather incredible. They end it by announcing that they should all be reinstated because they "did nothing wrong". They repeatedly talk as if they expected just to have their "concerns heard", to get a warning, etc. As an aside, what is with the insane, anti-HN moderation in here? Rational, constructive comments are greyed out because someone's raging bias is countered.
  - D13Fd 2y ago
    > I find it rather incredible. They end it by announcing that they should all be reinstated because they "did nothing wrong". They repeatedly talk as if they expected just to have their "concerns heard", to get a warning, etc. Yeah. This is true "privilege" speaking -- they don't seem to realize how fortunate they were to be in their positions in the first place. Companies employ you because it's a good deal for them. If you're lucky, you find a place where it is a good deal for you too. Protesting and disrupting work changes that calculus for the company. It's no longer a good deal for them, and the unsurprising result is that they don't want to employ such people or hire them back.
DevKoala 2y ago
> I chatted with them for maybe four minutes, like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re still sitting here! How’s it going?’ > That night, while at dinner, he got an email from Google saying he had been terminated. That is almost like out of a Silicon Valley episode, but gone dark.
reactordev 2y ago
Rule number one of being a rebel. Don’t do it at work. Protest all you want in the public streets where you have freedom of assembly. You do NOT have that freedom within a corporate office building. Regardless of employer. A few firings and maybe they’ll get the message to take it outside. I empathize with people wanting to speak out over something they are passionate about. I do this often. Just know your venue and know your audience. Bridges take a while to build…
- rufus_foreman 2y ago
  >> Rule number one of being a rebel. Don’t do it at work By doing it at work, they are risking high paying jobs, putting their careers at risk. In public. Risking something for a protest is the whole point. To the extent that they do that with their eyes open, risking high paying jobs, they are heroes. If they do that thinking the people who control Google will be fine with that and they will still keep their jobs, they are, well, without jobs.
  - zeroonetwothree 2y ago
    Their actions achieved nothing of consequence. I don't see how that makes them "heroes", even from the point of view of someone that supports their views.
    - rufus_foreman 2y ago
      >> Their actions achieved nothing of consequence They drew attention to their cause, you're talking about them. You're talking about their cause. >> even from the point of view of someone that supports their views What views of theirs do you support, exactly?
      - userbinator 2y ago
        There is such a thing as bad publicity.
        2y ago
_3u10 2y ago
[flagged]
glimshe 2y ago
Anyone can sue or complain about anyone else. It doesn't mean that they will get anything out of it. In this particular case, I'm seeing many people who support their message speaking against what they did.
- sevagh 2y ago
  I had a similar moral conflict at a workplace and I dealt with it by resigning. Despite my outrage, I can't imagine occupying the office of my boss as an acceptable move. It's not illegal for my company to do business I disagree with, and if I don't like it, I leave. Simple.
  - DangitBobby 2y ago
    Resigning under protest isn't really effective unless you are difficult to replace. Even in that scenario, you can almost certainly "protest" more effectively by speaking out and seeking targeted changes and then ultimately resigning or forcing them to fire you when they don't change. Protesting is at its core being an un-ignorable pain in the ass until a problem gets fixed. Resigning is pretty ignorable, especially if your reasons for doing so are not clear.
    - buffington 2y ago
      Who said it was a resignation of protest? The GP did it for themselves.
siva7 2y ago
> “There’s been a total change in the way Google responds to employees trying to have a voice in their workplace,” the fired software engineer said. “It’s night and day from the Google of even five, 10 years ago.” Having a political voice is different than having a voice against sexual harassment at the workplace. Please don't mix things that don't belong together. Radically expressing your political voice during your job duties will get you fired in almost all companies. SV was very lax with this in the past. They just adjusted to how it is normally handled in corporate.
- tovej 2y ago
  I feel like I have to push back against the idea that it is "radical" to object to your labor being used in a genocide. Am I the only one that feels like this is a fairly straightforward moral issue, and one I would expect to -- at the very least -- be allowed to express myself about. I also think the resolution of the moral issue is fairly straightforward, but I accept that there will be multiple opinions there. Still, people supporting Israel have not been fired, and supporting a genocide is -- in my mind -- a much more radical political position than objecting to one.
  - trueismywork 2y ago
    Sexual harassment cases are much more black and white and actionable than genocide cases.
    - tovej 2y ago
      Acting on them also has less of an impact on the bottom line, and doesn't sour the company's connections to Israeli or US military and defense industries. Corporations tend to act morally only when doing so aligns with their profit motives.
      - 0xBDB 2y ago
        Google has explicitly denied that Project Nimbus has anything to do with defense or military use. You can disbelieve this, of course, and I assume the internal protesters did disbelieve it or at least thought the tech was dual-use (I don't know what Nimbus actually is). But assuming it's true, and also assuming for the sake of argument that Israel is guilty of genocide, I think it raises an interesting question: do otherwise genocidal governments still need and deserve the right to buy civilian infrastructure to support their own people? I think they do, and that depriving them of that infrastructure could itself rise to the level of a crime (if taken to an extreme).
constantcrying 2y ago
Extremely unsurprising that they got fired and it seems somewhat far fetched. If your employer works as a military contractor for a state which actions you oppose so much that you engage in a protest, then obviously you can not work there. If you vehemently oppose US military involvement in the world you should not work at Raytheon. It simply is an arrangement which can not work, neither you, nor your employer should be interested.
francisofascii 2y ago
The story here isn't the people who were fired for protesting. That's fine. The story is the people fired for watching the protest or being vaguely associated with the people in the protest.
throwaway14356 2y ago
I wonder, would there be a difference if the employees had to kill women en children themselves and if so, how many steps of automation would make it?
- throwaway14356 2y ago
  With everyone so hung up on if to call the slaughter of woman, old people and children genocide or not the question seems fair. There seems to be a desire to transform a rather obvious reality into something that doesn't sound so bad.
commandlinefan 2y ago
If they're successful, I hope James Damore jumps in on this.
linearrust 2y ago
What a difference a few years makes. Top comment here : "Don’t do it at work." Top comment a few years ago : "If you work at Google and you have participated in this protest: Thank you." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17776276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17776276 The comments back then were very supportive of google employees protesting against china's censorship. While the top comments here seem to be against google employees protesting israeli war crimes. Why? A bit of a head scratcher.
- BobaFloutist 2y ago
  >Hundreds of Google employees, upset at the company’s decision to secretly build a censored version of its search engine for China, have signed a letter demanding more transparency to understand the ethical consequences of their work. >Google fired 28 employees in connection with sit-in protests at two of its offices this week...Some of them occupied the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian until they were forcibly removed by law enforcement.
- acoard 2y ago
  > Why? A bit of a head scratcher. It is because not everyone sees Israel as committing war crimes. I'm not looking in getting into a debate about it, I don't think this is the appropriate thread and do not want to run afoul of HN guidelines. But to treat your question as if it is serious and sincere (i.e. not a rhetorical question) the answer is because many do not see Israel as committing war crimes but basically everyone agreed China was censoring. I'd also add that censorship can be a particularly sensitive topic the tech community is largely more polarized against than the wider country, whereas weapons of war are viewed by some as valid defensive work. Basically, nerds care about censorship disproportionately. And of course, opinions on both China and Israel would be baked into this too. Again, not looking to get into the actual substance of these points here, merely answering your question for why large amounts of people see these as different.
  - keefle 2y ago
    While true, i think this answer misses the hypocrisy of the situation. 1. The same people who were supportive of the previous protests, are today's people who suggest "don't do it at work". 2. Regardless of whether Israel is commiting war crimes or not, if one is to be consistent, they must advocate that both the China censorship and genocide protests be done outside of work. 3. The main takeaway here is the bias (justified or not), and disappoint and disturbing hypocrisy in the reaction to the aforementioned protest
InTheArena 2y ago
Given the NLRB's position on "Google's ideological echo chamber," - the likelihood that the NLBR would rule in their favor seems non-existent given their strong defense of corporate rights to punish speech at work. (/s for those who need it)

205 points by lladnar 2y ago

National Labor Relations Board, in case you're wondering. The author doesn't bother to define it until the 12th paragraph.

greenie_beans 2y ago
it's' in your interest to know that acronym, whether your a laborer or owner.
- nolongerthere 2y ago
  You assume everyone lives and works in the US. If you’re not then you have no idea that that is.
  - greenie_beans 2y ago
    fair point! i do assume that. and i expect a US-based publisher to also assume that about their audience.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

Centigonal 2y ago

> This is a marked departure from the way Google has handled employee dissent in the past. In 2018, more than 600 Google workers signed an open letter opposing Project Dragonfly, an effort to build a search engine for China. As The Verge reported at the time, the petition began with an internally shared Google Doc, and all subsequent steps were also organized using Google products. Employees also urged Google to drop Project Maven, its contract with the US Department of Defense. That same year, over 20,000 Google employees staged a walkout in protest of the company’s handling of sexual harassment allegations against executives. [...] > “There’s been a total change in the way Google responds to employees trying to have a voice in their workplace,” the fired software engineer said. “It’s night and day from the Google of even five, 10 years ago.” This is the most interesting part of the article for me. Google's approach today, versus how it reacted to the backlash against Maven in 2018, reflects a very different company with a different attitude toward the opinions of its employees.

asib 2y ago
It doesn't actually say anything about how Google handled those employee demonstrations though... Were they less draconian?
rufus_foreman 2y ago
>> Google's approach today, versus how it reacted to the backlash against Maven in 2018, reflects a very different company with a different attitude toward the opinions of its employees I guess that's one possibility. Another possibility is that the owners and board of Google have a very different attitude towards protests in favor of Palestinians than the owners and board of Google had towards other protests in the past.
- nailer 2y ago
  These protests aren’t in favour of Palestinians, they’re specifically against Israel, and empower and excuse a racist death cult that has taken over Gaza.
b112 2y ago
One bit of info... this is an employer's market. 2108 was an employee's market.
lolinder 2y ago
Did Google change, or was this protest substantially different in character? In the reporting TFA links to about Maven I don't see any sign of employees staging disruptive protests on Google property. This is how Gizmodo describes that protest [0]: > Google’s decision to provide artificial intelligence to the Defense Department for the analysis of drone footage has prompted backlash from Google employees and academics. Thousands of employees have signed a petition asking Google to cancel its contract for the project, nicknamed Project Maven, and dozens of employees have resigned in protest. A petition signed by thousands and a bunch of resignations are very different than staging a sit in in an executive's office and refusing to leave when asked. And both of the protests referred to in the past (Maven and sexual harassment) seem to have had a much stronger base of support than the 20-50 people who participated in this. Is it possible that Google is the same Google and these people have gotten caught up in unreasonable post-2020 expectations for what valid political expression in the workplace looks like? [0] https://gizmodo.com/google-plans-not-to-renew-its-contract-for-project-mave-1826488620 https://gizmodo.com/google-plans-not-to-renew-its-contract-f...

PierceJoy 2y ago

I’m assuming at will employment makes this very unlikely to be successful.

papercrane 2y ago
At will employment doesn't matter here. Even with at-will employment it is illegal to fire employees for some reasons. For example, it's generally against the law to fire employees for discussing their work conditions. I think the employees will have a difficult case here, but it is conceivable that some of them might. For example I could see the NLRB ruling in favor of an employee who was fired after for expressing concern about a project with Israel, but I think the employees who staged a sit-in probably don't have a case.
AnotherGoodName 2y ago
Well you can't fire people for political reasons. It's a protected category. So the crux of it will likely depend on if there's similar protests from opposing viewpoints that were not dealt with similarly. Eg. If there were any counter protestors at the same event that weren't also fired that's a reasonably clear cut case of firing a group for political views.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- zeroonetwothree 2y ago
  Political affiliation is not a protected class. California law does restrict employers from punishing employees for their political activities, but this generally applies to activities done outside of work.

ActorNightly 2y ago

[flagged]

Georgelemental 2y ago
> where the most prominent voices in the movement support Hamas I suppose that depends on your definition of "the movement". But I am close friends with one of the activist leaders for divesting from Israeli government-linked companies on my university campus—and they're Jewish. So I'm personally skeptical of the scaremongering propaganda
- zeroCalories 2y ago
  Are you suggesting that there aren't Jews that support Hamas? I've known plenty of Uncle Toms and Kapos in my life.
  - Georgelemental 2y ago
    > there aren't Jews that support Hamas There are around 16 million Jews in the world, I'm sure you can find one or two to support more or less anything. But the Uncle Tom/Kapo analogy doesn't work; there are no Jews under Hamas rule (other than the hostages ofc) so there is no incentive for any of them to betray their people in that way.
    - zeroCalories 2y ago
      Of course there is an incentive. You get to reap social capital and get high on your own perceived holiness. Do you think someone like Norman Finkelstein would be so popular if he wasn't a Jew? Or Candace Owens black?
      - Georgelemental 2y ago
        Where in the world (outside Gaza) does explicitly supporting Hamas (as opposed to opposing war crimes) "reap social capital"?

worried4future 2y ago

The meat of it is here: > Google “retaliated against approximately 50 employees and interfered with their Section 7 rights by terminating and/or placing them on administrative leave in response to their protected concerted activity, namely, participation (or perceived participation) in a peaceful, non-disruptive protest that was directly and explicitly connected to their terms and conditions of work,” the complaint reads. Seems very thin to call on the NLRA here. The "protesters" stated goals were to disrupt work even for people not a member of the non-union (therefore not a strike) which is not a protected activity. Moreover, were any of these employees or any members of the minority union actually working on the Israeli contracts they objected to? While you can protest against your job duties under the NLRA (or job duties of your collective union members) I don't see that you can protest against company functions which aren't job duties you or your class aren't a part of. If the workers had just walked off the job and peacefully and non-disruptively protested in front of the building and refused to go back to their job until they (or other members of the minority union) had their job duties modified so they were not working on those projects and google had fired them, that seems like it would violate the NLRA. Anyway this seems like some fun FAFO. I wonder how many of the people who got fired were even members of the non-union before the "protest".

Simulacra 2y ago
It depends. Given the administrations position on such things right now, the NLRA could be used as a intimidation club against Google to settle.
davidf18 2y ago
[dead]
toast0 2y ago
I mean, go ahead and file a complaint, right? But my read of the situation while skimming the NLRB summary [1] is this complaint is unlikely to win > Strikes unlawful because of misconduct of strikers or other loss of protection. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a “sitdown” strike, when employees simply stay in the plant and refuse to work is not protected by the law. This feels pertinent, but not a whole match. > Furthermore, Section 8(b)(4) of the Act prohibits strikes for certain objects even though the objects are not necessarily unlawful if achieved by other means. An example of this would be a strike to compel Employer A to cease doing business with Employer B. It is not unlawful for Employer A voluntarily to stop doing business with Employer B, nor is it unlawful for a union merely to request that it do so. It is, however, unlawful for the union to strike with an object of forcing the employer to do so. These points will be covered in more detail in the explanation of Section 8(b)(4). In any event, employees who participate in an unlawful strike may be discharged and are not entitled to reinstatement. On the summary page, this looks like striking to prevent their employer from doing business with another employer (IDF) and might apply, but further reading seems to indicate this is about striking to not do business with a non-union employer, which isn't actually relevant. But either way, it's not clear to me that striking about who your employer does business with is a 'lawful' strike. [1] https://www.nlrb.gov/strikes https://www.nlrb.gov/strikes

xyst 2y ago

Has anybody noticed that whenever the protests pop up. Major news outlets tend to spin them as some sort of haven for “anti-Semitism” or cite them as the “violent protests”. I have yet to see organizations (at least on the ground, in major press releases) cite anything that represents hate against the Jewish population. Only rhetoric I have heard is those protesting the horrific actions of the Israeli government/military and the US governments enabling of those actions. Horrific actions by the Israeli government so far (at least since the Hamas raid): indiscriminate bombing in Gaza, bombing of hospitals, many civilians impacted and from what I gather most are underage children. Some American-Israelis at these protests (some even young adults in college) keep repeating the rhetoric by the media as well. Have seen some students say these protests are rampant with anti-Semitic rants and that these protests “want to get rid of them [Jewish students]” Again, I have been to a few of these protests (especially the ones in TX) and have yet to see anything of this sort. I have unfortunately seen people sitting on lawns not resisting law enforcement get their faces smashed into the ground by state troopers. Is the Israeli political machine just very effective? Or am I the delusional one ignoring the obvious? If it’s the latter, please point me to evidence of pro-Palestine organizations supporting the violent actions of Hamas terrorists. I don’t want to see individuals that have no visible ties spouting bullshit. There should be a press release by the orgs or leaders of these orgs stating this as such. So far I have come up empty as far as credible sources.

slantedview 2y ago
> Has anybody noticed that whenever the protests pop up. Major news outlets tend to spin them as some sort of haven for “anti-Semitism” or cite them as the “violent protests”. Yes. The reason for this is that people who oppose the protests, and effectively support what officials at the UN are calling an ongoing genocide, cannot win any argument on its merits. So the only thing they can do is paint the protesters as antisemitic, even though many protesters are Jewish. It's pathetic but effective, for now.
the_gastropod 2y ago
This is how it always seems to go. A huge segment of Americans still refer to the George Floyd protests as "George Floyd Riots" that "burned down" cities. It's, obviously, a ridiculous characterization of an overwhelmingly peaceful nation-wide set of protests.

manlobster 2y ago

Googler protests in the past have typically been walk-outs and other outdoor gatherings. This protest took place within the offices. Some of the protestors occupied senior executives' offices for many hours, and had to be removed by the police. Some of the protestors also streamed their protest from within the offices of the notoriously confidentiality-obsessed company. I don't buy the narrative that Google is cracking down on employee activism. It seems more like the activists in this instance went too far and were dealt with accordingly.

llm_nerd 2y ago
I think it's fair to say that Google is cracking down. They did tolerate activities like this previously, but came down like a hammer on this. It seems like they are setting a precedent and giving fair warning to anyone else thinking of doing something similar. Things like this can be viral, as seen with the college protests. And the more enabled they are, the worse they get, as seen with Columbia. And to be fair there has been a big shift in the market for tech workers. There was a sort of indispensable aura that protected tech employees before that just isn't there any more. People who think this sort of thing wouldn't yield a rapid firing are living in the past. There is a video from the participants- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLiWHO71fOU&lc= https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLiWHO71fOU&lc= I find it rather incredible. They end it by announcing that they should all be reinstated because they "did nothing wrong". They repeatedly talk as if they expected just to have their "concerns heard", to get a warning, etc. As an aside, what is with the insane, anti-HN moderation in here? Rational, constructive comments are greyed out because someone's raging bias is countered.
- D13Fd 2y ago
  > I find it rather incredible. They end it by announcing that they should all be reinstated because they "did nothing wrong". They repeatedly talk as if they expected just to have their "concerns heard", to get a warning, etc. Yeah. This is true "privilege" speaking -- they don't seem to realize how fortunate they were to be in their positions in the first place. Companies employ you because it's a good deal for them. If you're lucky, you find a place where it is a good deal for you too. Protesting and disrupting work changes that calculus for the company. It's no longer a good deal for them, and the unsurprising result is that they don't want to employ such people or hire them back.

DevKoala 2y ago

> I chatted with them for maybe four minutes, like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re still sitting here! How’s it going?’ > That night, while at dinner, he got an email from Google saying he had been terminated. That is almost like out of a Silicon Valley episode, but gone dark.

reactordev 2y ago

Rule number one of being a rebel. Don’t do it at work. Protest all you want in the public streets where you have freedom of assembly. You do NOT have that freedom within a corporate office building. Regardless of employer. A few firings and maybe they’ll get the message to take it outside. I empathize with people wanting to speak out over something they are passionate about. I do this often. Just know your venue and know your audience. Bridges take a while to build…

rufus_foreman 2y ago
>> Rule number one of being a rebel. Don’t do it at work By doing it at work, they are risking high paying jobs, putting their careers at risk. In public. Risking something for a protest is the whole point. To the extent that they do that with their eyes open, risking high paying jobs, they are heroes. If they do that thinking the people who control Google will be fine with that and they will still keep their jobs, they are, well, without jobs.
- zeroonetwothree 2y ago
  Their actions achieved nothing of consequence. I don't see how that makes them "heroes", even from the point of view of someone that supports their views.
  - rufus_foreman 2y ago
    >> Their actions achieved nothing of consequence They drew attention to their cause, you're talking about them. You're talking about their cause. >> even from the point of view of someone that supports their views What views of theirs do you support, exactly?
    - userbinator 2y ago
      There is such a thing as bad publicity.
      - 2y ago

_3u10 2y ago

[flagged]

glimshe 2y ago

Anyone can sue or complain about anyone else. It doesn't mean that they will get anything out of it. In this particular case, I'm seeing many people who support their message speaking against what they did.

sevagh 2y ago
I had a similar moral conflict at a workplace and I dealt with it by resigning. Despite my outrage, I can't imagine occupying the office of my boss as an acceptable move. It's not illegal for my company to do business I disagree with, and if I don't like it, I leave. Simple.
- DangitBobby 2y ago
  Resigning under protest isn't really effective unless you are difficult to replace. Even in that scenario, you can almost certainly "protest" more effectively by speaking out and seeking targeted changes and then ultimately resigning or forcing them to fire you when they don't change. Protesting is at its core being an un-ignorable pain in the ass until a problem gets fixed. Resigning is pretty ignorable, especially if your reasons for doing so are not clear.
  - buffington 2y ago
    Who said it was a resignation of protest? The GP did it for themselves.

siva7 2y ago

> “There’s been a total change in the way Google responds to employees trying to have a voice in their workplace,” the fired software engineer said. “It’s night and day from the Google of even five, 10 years ago.” Having a political voice is different than having a voice against sexual harassment at the workplace. Please don't mix things that don't belong together. Radically expressing your political voice during your job duties will get you fired in almost all companies. SV was very lax with this in the past. They just adjusted to how it is normally handled in corporate.

tovej 2y ago
I feel like I have to push back against the idea that it is "radical" to object to your labor being used in a genocide. Am I the only one that feels like this is a fairly straightforward moral issue, and one I would expect to -- at the very least -- be allowed to express myself about. I also think the resolution of the moral issue is fairly straightforward, but I accept that there will be multiple opinions there. Still, people supporting Israel have not been fired, and supporting a genocide is -- in my mind -- a much more radical political position than objecting to one.
- trueismywork 2y ago
  Sexual harassment cases are much more black and white and actionable than genocide cases.
  - tovej 2y ago
    Acting on them also has less of an impact on the bottom line, and doesn't sour the company's connections to Israeli or US military and defense industries. Corporations tend to act morally only when doing so aligns with their profit motives.
    - 0xBDB 2y ago
      Google has explicitly denied that Project Nimbus has anything to do with defense or military use. You can disbelieve this, of course, and I assume the internal protesters did disbelieve it or at least thought the tech was dual-use (I don't know what Nimbus actually is). But assuming it's true, and also assuming for the sake of argument that Israel is guilty of genocide, I think it raises an interesting question: do otherwise genocidal governments still need and deserve the right to buy civilian infrastructure to support their own people? I think they do, and that depriving them of that infrastructure could itself rise to the level of a crime (if taken to an extreme).

constantcrying 2y ago

Extremely unsurprising that they got fired and it seems somewhat far fetched. If your employer works as a military contractor for a state which actions you oppose so much that you engage in a protest, then obviously you can not work there. If you vehemently oppose US military involvement in the world you should not work at Raytheon. It simply is an arrangement which can not work, neither you, nor your employer should be interested.

francisofascii 2y ago

The story here isn't the people who were fired for protesting. That's fine. The story is the people fired for watching the protest or being vaguely associated with the people in the protest.

throwaway14356 2y ago

I wonder, would there be a difference if the employees had to kill women en children themselves and if so, how many steps of automation would make it?

throwaway14356 2y ago
With everyone so hung up on if to call the slaughter of woman, old people and children genocide or not the question seems fair. There seems to be a desire to transform a rather obvious reality into something that doesn't sound so bad.

commandlinefan 2y ago

If they're successful, I hope James Damore jumps in on this.

linearrust 2y ago

What a difference a few years makes. Top comment here : "Don’t do it at work." Top comment a few years ago : "If you work at Google and you have participated in this protest: Thank you." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17776276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17776276 The comments back then were very supportive of google employees protesting against china's censorship. While the top comments here seem to be against google employees protesting israeli war crimes. Why? A bit of a head scratcher.

BobaFloutist 2y ago
>Hundreds of Google employees, upset at the company’s decision to secretly build a censored version of its search engine for China, have signed a letter demanding more transparency to understand the ethical consequences of their work. >Google fired 28 employees in connection with sit-in protests at two of its offices this week...Some of them occupied the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian until they were forcibly removed by law enforcement.
acoard 2y ago
> Why? A bit of a head scratcher. It is because not everyone sees Israel as committing war crimes. I'm not looking in getting into a debate about it, I don't think this is the appropriate thread and do not want to run afoul of HN guidelines. But to treat your question as if it is serious and sincere (i.e. not a rhetorical question) the answer is because many do not see Israel as committing war crimes but basically everyone agreed China was censoring. I'd also add that censorship can be a particularly sensitive topic the tech community is largely more polarized against than the wider country, whereas weapons of war are viewed by some as valid defensive work. Basically, nerds care about censorship disproportionately. And of course, opinions on both China and Israel would be baked into this too. Again, not looking to get into the actual substance of these points here, merely answering your question for why large amounts of people see these as different.
- keefle 2y ago
  While true, i think this answer misses the hypocrisy of the situation. 1. The same people who were supportive of the previous protests, are today's people who suggest "don't do it at work". 2. Regardless of whether Israel is commiting war crimes or not, if one is to be consistent, they must advocate that both the China censorship and genocide protests be done outside of work. 3. The main takeaway here is the bias (justified or not), and disappoint and disturbing hypocrisy in the reaction to the aforementioned protest

InTheArena 2y ago

Given the NLRB's position on "Google's ideological echo chamber," - the likelihood that the NLBR would rule in their favor seems non-existent given their strong defense of corporate rights to punish speech at work. (/s for those who need it)