SAN FRANCISCO — Google on Wednesday fired 28 workers after dozens of employees participated in sit-ins at the company's New York and Sunnyvale, California, offices to protest against the company’s cloud computing contract with the Israeli government.
A day earlier, nine employees were arrested on charges of trespassing at the two offices.
"Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behaviour," a Google spokesperson said in a statement.
Years before the dismissals, tensions had been simmering between the company’s management and some activist employees over Project Nimbus, a US$1.2 billion Google and Amazon deal to supply the Israeli government with cloud services, such as artificial intelligence.
That discord had deepened since the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip began in October. Google recently fired an employee who disrupted an Israeli technology conference in New York. And the company is even planning to make changes to a corporate forum because employees were bickering about the conflict.
Google said it would continue to investigate the Tuesday protests. In Sunnyvale, employees refused to leave the office of Thomas Kurian, the CEO of Google Cloud.
A sign for Google Cloud offices is seen in Sunnyvale, California, on Tuesday. (Photo: Reuters)
Google employees affiliated with the group that organised the sit-ins, called No Tech for Apartheid, said in a statement that the firings were "a flagrant act of retaliation."
"Google workers have the right to peacefully protest about terms and conditions of our labour," the employees said. They added that some of the employees Google fired had not participated in the sit-ins.
The Nimbus contract, announced in 2021, was to supply various Israeli government ministries with cloud software. Since the contract’s inception, some Google employees have expressed concern that the company was aiding Israel’s military.
A Google spokesperson said that Nimbus "is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services."
In 2018, Google workers successfully pushed the company to end a deal with the United States Defense Department. Called Project Maven, it would have helped the military analyse drone videos.
Employees who have taken part in Nimbus activism said in their statement that they would continue protesting "until the company drops Project Nimbus."
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.