Google Fires 28 Employees Involved in Sit-in Protest Over $1.2B Israel Contract

Google has ter­mi­nat­ed the employ­ment of 28 work­ers who par­tic­i­pat­ed in sit-in protests at the com­pa­ny’s New York and Sun­ny­vale offices against Project Nim­bus, a $1.2 bil­lion joint con­tract with Ama­zon to pro­vide AI and cloud ser­vices to the Israeli government. 

The demon­stra­tions, led by the No Tech for Apartheid orga­ni­za­tion, occurred on Tues­day across mul­ti­ple Google locations.

Nine pro­test­ers were arrest­ed on tres­pass­ing charges, with sev­er­al employ­ees receiv­ing notices from Google’s Employ­ee Rela­tions group regard­ing their involve­ment in the protest. 

The com­pa­ny empha­sized its com­mit­ment to main­tain­ing con­fi­den­tial­i­ty while warn­ing employ­ees that pol­i­cy-vio­lat­ing con­duct would not be tolerated.

The inci­dent high­lights the ongo­ing fric­tion between Google’s lead­er­ship and activist employ­ees who oppose sup­ply­ing tech­nol­o­gy to the Israeli gov­ern­ment. The com­pa­ny’s actions send a strong mes­sage about its stance on employ­ee activism, par­tic­u­lar­ly regard­ing con­tro­ver­sial busi­ness dealings.