Google Layoff 20 Employees Arrest 9 Others Following Contract Opposition

Bloomberg reported that the biggest search engine has laid off over 20 employees in response to their opposition to Google's $1.2 billion contract to supply cloud and AI services to the Israeli government and military.

The 28 layoffs followed the arrest of nine workers on Tuesday night after a sit-in at the company's offices in Sunnyvale, California, and Seattle, New York. One of the arrests occurred at the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian. The demonstration was organised by No Tech for Apartheid.

READ ALSO: 2024 UNESCO Internship Program. Apply Now!

Before the nine (9) were arrested, protesters wore shirts and held banners that said, "No more genocide for profit," while they sat in his office for more than nine hours.

"These protests were part of a longstanding campaign by a group of organizations and people who largely don't work at Google," a Google spokesperson told NBC News in a statement Wednesday.

"A small number of employee protesters entered and disrupted a few of our locations. Physically impeding other employees' work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior. After refusing multiple requests to leave the premises, law enforcement was engaged to remove them to ensure office safety," the statement said.

"We have so far concluded individual investigations that resulted in the termination of employment for 28 employees, and will continue to investigate and take action as needed," it added.

The protests were organised by No Tech for Apartheid, a group of tech professionals who have been calling on Google and Amazon to renounce their joint $1.2 billion Project Nimbus contract, which provides data centers, cloud infrastructure, and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli government and military.

WIN N50,000 GIVEAWAY EVERY WEEK HERE!

Google fired the workers "indiscriminately," according to No Tech for Apartheid, and they had staged a "peaceful sit-in and refusing to leave did not damage property or threaten other workers."

In a statement released late on Wednesday, it claimed that the company valued its contract with the Israeli government more than its workers and called into question its motive for avoiding directly confronting us and our concerns, as well as its attempt to justify illegal, retaliatory firings.

According to an internal memo obtained by CNBC, Google sent a strong warning to its staff. Vice President of Global Security Chris Rackow said, "If you are one of the few who are tempted to think we are going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again." 

The company stated that its work "is not directed at military or highly sensitive, classified, or highly sensitive workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services."

On Wednesday night, a Google representative told CNBC, "Google Cloud supports numerous governments around the world in countries where we operate, including the Israeli government, with our generally available cloud computing services."

The project has become a "major health & safety workplace conditions issue," with many employees quitting after citing "mental health consequences of working at a company that is using their labor to enable a genocide," the group said in a statement posted on Medium on Wednesday.

"On a personal level, I am opposed to Google taking any military contracts — no matter which government they're with or what exactly the contract is about," Cheyne Anderson, a Google Cloud software engineer based in Washington, told CNBC on Wednesday.

Anderson was one of nine workers arrested across the country on Tuesday. Some of those arrests were streamed live on Twitch.