Twenty-eight workers were let go by Google on Wednesday for taking part in demonstrations against Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion cloud deal that also involves Amazon and the Israeli government.
Employees of both businesses have stated that the agreement gives Israel's security services access to cutting-edge technology, which may enable the murder or injury of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. According to reports from Time and The Intercept, the Israel Defense Forces can access services offered by Project Nimbus.
Google has acknowledged that 28 workers have been fired. This comes only hours after nine workers were arrested by police late on Tuesday for staging sit-in protests at Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian's Sunnyvale, California, and corporate headquarters in New York. Along with nineteen other protesters, all nine of those workers were let go.
The employees were let go after an internal inquiry found they had physically impeded other employees' work and prevented them from accessing Google facilities, according to a statement from Google spokesperson Anna Kowalczyk. "After refusing multiple requests to leave the premises, law enforcement was engaged to ensure office safety," the speaker continued. According to her, the Nimbus contract is "not directed" at military or confidential activity.
The move against Project Nimbus on Tuesday came after it was claimed that over 34,000 Palestinians had died as a result of the IDF's onslaught against Hamas in Gaza. On October 7, Hamas killed around 1,100 Israelis, sparking the start of the military onslaught.
Alongside the sit-ins at Google, over a hundred individuals protested outside the company's headquarters in Sunnyvale, Seattle, and New York, many of whom were Google employees. Kowalczyk from Google described the staff participation as "a small number."
The bulk of Google's employment consists of workers from parent company Alphabet, which as of the end of 2023 reported having more than 180,000 employees. Beyond the people who actively took part in Tuesday's protest, a number of demonstrators at Google's New York office told WIRED they have support from other parts of the firm.
According to Jane Chung, a representative of No Tech for Apartheid, the coalition of tech workers and activist groups led by Muslims and Jews, MPower Change and Jewish Voice for Peace, which coordinated the demonstrations, some of the fired employees engaged in significantly less provocative behavior than those who occupied offices.
Some, she added, had just gone to an open-air demonstration and picked up a t-shirt that the organizers had distributed. Some were "flyering outside, hovering close to the demonstrators in case of emergency."
Former YouTube software engineer Zelda Montes claims she was detained after spending more than 10 hours in Google's New York headquarters. She charges the firm with violating labor laws in the United States.
By retaliating against employees who weren't arrested, Google is "clearly engaging in illegal behavior to deter our labor organizing," according to Montes. "I'm shocked by how evil Google can be, but not surprised—they're more upset about workers peacefully refusing to leave than they are about their technology killing people."
The Nimbus contract is "not directed" at "workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services," according to Google's Kowalczyk.