OFF OUR CLOUD!
Google axes 28 staffers for sit-in over Israel pact
Google has fired 28 employees over their participation in a 10-hour sit-in at the search giant’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, Calif., to protest the company’s $1.2 billion cloud contract with Israel, The Post has learned.
The pro-Palestinian staffers — who had donned traditional Arab headscarves as they stormed and occupied the office of a top executive in California Tuesday — were terminated late Wednesday after an internal investigation, Google VP of Global Security Chris Rackow said in a companywide memo.
‘Defaced property’
“They took over office spaces, defaced our propert, and physically impeded the work of other Googlers,” Rackow wrote in the memo obtained by The Post. “Their behavior was unacceptable, extremely disruptive, and made coworkers feel threatened.”
“Behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it. It clearly violates multiple policies that all employees must adhere to — including our code of conduct and policy on harassment, discrimination, retaliation, standards of conduct and workplace concerns.”
Rackow added the company “takes this extremely seriously, and we will continue to apply our longstanding policies to take action against disruptive behavior — up to and including termination.”
A Google spokesperson confirmed the firings.
The fired staffers are affiliated with a group called No Tech For Apartheid, which has been critical of Google’s response to the Israel-Hamas war.
The protesters have demanded that Google pull out of a $1.2 billion “Project Nimbus” contract — in which Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services provide cloud-computing and AI services for the Israeli government and military.
Final warnings
The group had posted several videos and livestreams of the protests on its X account — including the exact moment employees were issued final warnings and arrested by local police for trespassing.
The impacted workers blasted Google over the firings in a statement shared by No Tech For Apartheid rep Jane Chung.
“This evening, Google indiscriminately fired 28 workers, including those among us who did not directly participate in yesterday’s historic, bicoastal, 10-hour sit-in protests,” the workers said.
“This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers — the ones who create real value for executives and shareholders.”
“Sundar Pichai and Thomas Kurian are genocide profiteers,” the statement added, referring to Google’s CEO and the CEO of its cloud unit, respectively.
“We cannot comprehend how these men are able to sleep at night while their tech has enabled 100,000 Palestinians killed, reported missing or wounded in the last six months of Israel’s genocide — and counting.”
An NYPD rep said the Tuesday protest “involved approximately 50 participants” in total and “four arrests were made for trespassing inside the Google building.”
The Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety said the protest in California “consisted of around 80 participants.” Five protesters who refused to leave the Google office were “arrested without incident for criminal trespassing,” booked and released, a spokesperson added.
It couldn’t immediately be learned if all nine arrested employees were among those fired.
Last month, Google fired a software engineer who publicly blasted one of the company’s Israel-based executives during a tech conference in New York City.
‘ Their behavior was unacceptable, made’ extremely disruptive, and co-workers feel threatened. — Google VP of Global Security Chris Rackow