The giant Google company which claims it empowers freedom of speech has announced Thursday that it had dismissed 28 employees after some staff members had participated in ‘No Tech for Genocide’ campaign and against the company’s cloud contract with the Israeli military.
Google said after it had concluded individual investigations, it reached a decision to fire 28 employees and will take action as needed against others, for “Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing Google facilities.”
In a statement on Medium, Google workers affiliated with the “No Tech for Apartheid” campaign called it a “flagrant act of retaliation, stating that some employees who did not directly participate in Tuesday’s protests were also among those fired. “Google workers have the right to peacefully protest about terms and conditions of our labour,” the statement added.
On April 16, Google employees were leading a national day of action to demand its labor to drop support of Israeli apartheid and stop its complicity in Gaza genocide.
‘No Tech For Genocide’ campaign was kicked off by dozens of Google employees who took over Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s office at the Google headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA, to call on the company to drop Project Nimbus.
The protesting faction said that the 1.2 billion contract that allows Israeli military to make further surveillance of and unlawful data collection on Palestinians. Moreover, it facilitates expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements on Palestinian land.
Protests at Google are not first of its kind. In 2018, workers successfully pushed the company to shelve a contract with the US military, Project Maven, intended to analyse aerial drone imagery with potential application in warfare.
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