Google has once again terminated employees for organizing protests over political affairs. Last week, 28 employees were fired for taking part in a sit-in protest against the tech giant's cloud contract with Israel. According to a report by the Verge, Google fired 20 more over the protest.
In a company blog post, Pichai warned its employees that the workplace is not for contentious debates or political disputes. The disruption is majorly taking place over a $1.2 billion defense contract known as Project Nimbus.
As per a statement by Jane Chung, spokesperson of an organization called No Tech for Apartheid, Google has reportedly dismissed 'non-participating bystanders' in this latest round of terminations. She added that the total count of fired employees for organising protests has now risen to nearly 50.
"We’re heeding the call from over 1000 Google and Amazon workers to rise up against the contract, known as Project Nimbus. Technology should be used to bring people together, not enable apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and settler-colonialism.... Amazon and Google execs who signed this contract can still choose to be on the right side of history," the organisation stated in a web article.
While Google didn't directly address the Middle East conflict in its response, the company highlighted that the tech giant “is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform.”
“When we come to work, our goal is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. That supersedes everything else and I expect us to act with a focus that reflects that,” the company CEO, Sundar Pichai added.
