Google sacks 28 employees who staged sit-in over Israel protest
28 Google staff members have been fired after staging a protest inside their office over the company’s work for the Israeli military.
Demonstrations were held at the tech giant’s offices in New York and Silicon Valley before nine employees were arrested for refusing to leave.
Tensions at the company have grown after the technology firm began working to provide cloud computing services and artificial intelligence software for the Israeli government.
The programme known as Project Nimbus is reportedly worth up to $1.2billion.
Staff were seen wearing t-shirts and holding signs which read: “Googler against genocide”, “no more genocide for profit” and “no cloud for apartheid”.
The protest – organised by the campaign group No Tech For Apartheid, which broadcast them on the streaming site Twitch – developed on Tuesday.
Google announced that staff were immediately placed under investigation and had their access to IT systems shut off.
Chiefs added that 28 employees had been fired.
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Chris Rackow, Google’s head of security, wrote: “The overwhelming majority of our employees do the right thing. If you’re one of the few who are tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again.
“The company takes this extremely seriously, and we will continue to apply our longstanding policies to take action against disruptive behaviour – up to and including termination.”
Rackow said the behaviour was “unacceptable, extremely disruptive, and made co-workers feel threatened”.
The No Tech For Apartheid group hit back saying: “This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2bn contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers.”
One employee, Kate J Sim who was sacked, took to social media to slam Google.
She wrote: “McCarthyism is alive and well. Look how terrified they are of worker power.”
Google said that its contract with the Israeli government involves “generally available cloud computing services”, adding: “This work is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.”