Google worker says the company is 'silencing our voices' after dozens are fired

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The tech giant fired 28 employees who took part in a protest over the company's Project Nimbus contract with the Israeli government. One fired worker tells her story.

Google has a contract with the Israeli government where it provides the country with cloud computing services. Not all Google employees are happy about that.

"I think that speaks volumes to just how little people at work actually know about this contract," Montes says, who worked as a software engineer at YouTube, which is owned by Google.Montes immediately joined a Google employee group called No Tech for Apartheid, which had been organizing around Project Nimbus since 2021. Their goal is for Google to drop its contract with the Israeli government.

A Google spokesperson told NPR in an email when asked about Tuesday's protestors,"physically impeding other employees' work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior. After refusing multiple requests to leave the premises, law enforcement was engaged to remove them to ensure office safety.

They sat around and played the card game Uno until they were approached by Google security. Montes says they were then told to leave or else they'd be arrested, but it wasn't until about eight hours later that the police arrived. In all, nine protestors were arrested in California and New York. It wasn't until the following evening that Google began to fire workers. Montes says she was placed on administrative leave at first, but then got an email saying she was terminated.

 

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