Google sacks more staffers for opposing Israel deal; total goes up to 50

Google has reportedly fired at least 20 more workers for protesting against the company’s services to the Israeli government amid the Gaza war. With these, the total number of terminated staff has gone up to more than 50, news agency AP has reported.

The row revolves around Project Nimbus, a $1.2-billion contract signed in 2021 for Google and Amazon to provide the Israeli government with cloud computing and artificial intelligence services.

Quashing dissent?

As workers squatted in protest at Google offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, last week, the company called the police, who made arrests. The group organizing the protests, No Tech For Apartheid, told AP that the company fired 30 workers last week.

Later, Google reportedly fired “over 20” more staffers, “including non-participating bystanders during last week’s protests,” AP quoted Jane Chung, a spokeswoman for No Tech For Apartheid, as saying.

Chung said in a press release that Google’s aim was to “quash dissent, silence its workers, and reassert its power over them”.

Google rubbishes charge

Google, without specifying how many were fired, said the additional workers were sacked after the company investigation gathered details from coworkers who were “physically disrupted”. Google said it identified employees who used masks and didn’t carry their staff badges to hide their identities.

The company negated the group’s claims, saying that it carefully confirmed that “every single one of those whose employment was terminated was personally and definitively involved in disruptive activity inside our buildings”.

(With agency inputs)