Google announced on Thursday that it had fired 28 employees for participating in protests against the cloud computing contract signed between the company and the Israeli government.
According to Google, a few protesting employees entered some office locations and disrupted work there.
“Hindering the work of other employees and preventing them from accessing our facilities clearly violates our policies and is completely unacceptable behavior,” the company said in a statement.
Google also stated that it has conducted individual investigations, decided to dismiss the 28 employees, and will continue to investigate and take further actions as needed.
On Tuesday, protests led by the organization “No Tech for Apartheid” spread to Google’s offices in New York City, Seattle, and Sunnyvale, California.
“No Tech for Apartheid” reported that after a 10-hour sit-in protest on Tuesday, police arrested nine Google employees. Protesters in Sunnyvale occupied an office used by Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian.
In a statement on Medium, Google employees affiliated with “No Tech for Apartheid” described the company’s decision as “open retaliation” and noted that some employees not directly involved in Tuesday’s protests were also among those fired by Google.
The statement added: “Google employees have the right to peacefully protest our terms and conditions of employment.”
Protesters claim that the project called Nimbus aims to provide cloud services to the Israeli government, supporting the development of military tools by the Israeli government. Nimbus is a $1.2 billion contract awarded to Google and Amazon by Israel in 2021.
Google, on the other hand, insists in its statement that the Nimbus contract is not for “highly sensitive, confidential, or military-related work involving weapons or intelligence services.”
(This article referenced reporting from Reuters.)
Responsible editor: Lin Yan