Google: Suit over employee disclosures can proceed
A state appeals court reinstated a lawsuit Tuesday by current and former Google employees who accuse the Mountain View tech giant of illegally forbidding them to say anything to the news media or prospective employers about their jobs or working conditions.
The suit was filed in 2016 by a Google product manager, under the name of John Doe, and joined by two former employees. They alleged that the confidentiality agreements that all employees were required to sign prevented
Google, whose Mountain View offices have been empty during the pandemic, could face antitrust cases filed by federal officials and individual states.
them from discussing unsafe or discriminatory working conditions — with regulatory officials, the press, members of the public or even one another — and also barred them from disclosing their wages when negotiating with a potential new employer.
A San Francisco Superior Court judge dismissed the suit, saying it concerned working conditions that were exclusively regulated by the National Labor Relations Board. Meanwhile, the NLRB filed its own suit against Google, which agreed to post a
notice for 60 days assuring employees they had the right “to discuss wages, hours, and working conditions with other employees, the press/media, and other third parties.”
But even if Google keeps that promise, the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco said Tuesday, employees can still seek damages against the company for allegedly violating California labor laws.
Federal law is intended to protect workers’ right to organize and form unions, while “California law disapproves such policies for a different reason: because they interfere with every employee’s right to bring workplace issues to the attention of supervisors, state agencies, courts and the public,” Justice Alison Tucher said in the 21 ruling.
She said federal labor law would not protect employees against a company’s prohibition of disclosing its practices to a competitor while seeking new employment, or against its ban on telling government officials about the company’s alleged violations of securities laws. The California law allowing employees to disclose their wages, Tucher said, was sponsored by women’s groups to aid in enforcement of laws against sex discrimination.
Presiding Justice Stuart Pollak joined Tucher’s opinion. In dissent, Justice Tracie Brown said the state laws that the suit invoked had the same purpose as federal labor laws: “to allow employees to take action to improve their wages and working conditions.”
Reinstating the suit “could allow plaintiffs to impose monetary penalties for practices the (National Labor Relations) Board decided to remedy via settlement,” Brown said.
Google said it would appeal the ruling. When the suit was filed in 2016, a company spokesperson told Reuters that the employees’ complaints were “baseless” and the confidentiality pledges were aimed at protecting sensitive business information, not to prevent discussion of working conditions.