Google Sacks Staff Protesting Cloud Services Deal with Israel
Multinational tech company Google has today announced it has relieved 28 of its employees of their jobs after staging protests on Tuesday in some of the company’s offices against their cloud contract with the Israeli government.
Their employment was terminated on Wednesday following a sit-in protest inside Google’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California.
According to a statement by No Tech for Apartheid, the organisation that led the protests, dozens of Google workers made their way inside Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s office at the Sunnyvale office, as well as on the 10th-floor commons in New York City to stage the protests.
“They refuse to leave until @google stops powering the genocide in Gaza,” the group added, showing pictures of protestors holding banners inside the offices, some of which said “no more genocide for profit” and “Googlers against genocide”.
Google then announced the dismissal of 28 of its workers after the protests, claiming they physically hindered the work of others and displayed “unacceptable behaviour”. In addition, the Google spokesperson said the company would “continue to investigate and take action as needed”. Also, nine people were reportedly arrested on trespassing charges
Googleplex HQ (cropped)
The Pancake of Heaven!, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
The protests are directed at a $1.2bn contract entered into by Google and Amazon to provide cloud services to the Israeli government, known as Project Nimbus.
Dolupo Balogun
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