28 Google Employees Fired After Protest Made ‘Co-Workers Feel Threatened’

Google has fired 28 of its employees for being involved in a protest against the company’s contract with the Israeli government.

The company conducted an investigation and determined that nearly 30 employees had made their “co-workers feel threatened” by the protests in New York and California.

Employees protested in response to the $1.3 billion contract, Project Nimbus, between Amazon and the Israeli government for AI and cloud services.

Protestors shouted “I am a Google Cloud software engineer, and I refuse to build technology that powers genocide, apartheid, or surveillance. No tech for apartheid!”

A recent Time Magazine report claims some Google employees were not happy with the company’s possibility of aiding Israel in its war in Gaza. CBS reports the No Tech for Apartheid protests were peaceful, but nine individuals were arrested.

“Google workers have the right to peacefully protest about terms and conditions of our labor. These firings were clearly retaliatory,” No Tech said in a statement.

Chris Rackow, Google’s vice president for global security, sent a company-wide email following the protests that read: “Their behavior was unacceptable, extremely disruptive, and made co-workers feel threatened.”

A Google spokesperson told CBS: “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.”

Another spokesperson told TIME: “We have been very clear that the Nimbus contract is for workloads running on our commercial platform by Israeli government ministries such as finance, healthcare, transportation, and education. Our work is not directed at highly sensitive or classified military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.”

An Amazon spokesperson said the company “is focused on making the benefits of our world-leading cloud technology available to all our customers, wherever they are located.”

23-year-old software engineer Eddie Hatfield spoke to the magazine, claiming that “his act of protest was the culmination of an internal effort.”

“I was told by my manager that I can’t let these concerns affect my work,” he told TIME. “Which is kind of ironic, because I see it as part of my work. I’m trying to ensure that the users of my work are safe. How can I work on what I’m being told to do, if I don’t think it’s safe?”

He was fired three days after the protest. “This employee disrupted a coworker who was giving a presentation – interfering with an official company-sponsored event,” the Google spokesperson told the magazine of Hatfield’s firing. “This behavior is not okay, regardless of the issue, and the employee was terminated for violating our policies.”

A Google spokesperson claims “Google Cloud supports numerous governments around the world in countries where we operate, including the Israeli government, with our generally available cloud computing services.”

They added, “This work is not directed at highly sensitive, classified or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.”

Zelda Montes, a YouTube software engineer, said, “We’re not going to stop. I can say definitively that this is not something that is just going to die down. It’s only going to grow stronger.”

This news comes days after protestors took over the Golden Gate Bridge on Tax Day. Several individuals were seen blocking all lanes and holding up signs that read “Stop the world for Gaza” and “End the siege on Gaza now.”

That same day, another protest supporting Palestine closed roads leading to O’Hare Airport, Chicago, leaving many travelers having to exit their vehicles and walk through traffic with their luggage to catch their flights.

The group behind the protest, Chicago Dissenters, released a statement in an Instagram post. “On this Tax Day, when millions are paying taxes which fund the ongoing U.S. and Israeli bombardment of Gaza, protestors seek to take dramatic action,” the group stated.

They added, “O’Hare International Airport is one of the largest in the country, and there will be NO business as usual while Palestinians suffer at the hands of American-funded bombing by Israel.”