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Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

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Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel doesn't slaughter civilians. In fact, asymmetric tactics and terror attacks against civilians is constantly perpetrated by hamas (as evidenced on 10/7)

> Israel doesn't slaughter civilians It’s hard to square this statement against the 13-to-25,000 estimated (Assoc Press vs Al Jazeera) dead women and children in the last 6 months though. Just objectively speaking, that is a shocking number of civilian deaths even at the low end.

What? No, it's quite easy to 'square' it actually. Civilian casualties are inevitable when hamas embeds itself into the civilian populace and forces them to stay in the positions they operate from.

Did you have similar outrage when the Russian air force was dropping 1000lb dumb bombs on similarly densely populated cities in Syria from 2015-2017? I guarantee you a lot more civilians died needlessly in places like aleppo and palmyra than Israel has ever 'slaughtered'.

Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they shouldn't be suing imo. Suing implies they think they shouldn't have been fired, which means their risk was not intentional. So they're not heroes.

In a just world they wouldn't have been fired for speaking out for what they did.

That's purely based on personal opinion though. I'm sure you could find people with the opposite opinion, that in a just world they would be able to go to work and do their job without having political debates forced on them.

Or alternately, one could easily say that in a just world a person would leave their when they disagree with the company rather than making a spectacle out of it.

Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can read this into anything. > - "from the river to the sea" -> implies the destruction of Israel The Israeli vs. Palestinian conflict is, for the Palestinians, about property rights. And both sides claim the full area between the Jordan river to the Sea. Plenty of groups say the same thing, whether it's the Chinese view on Taiwan ("one China!") or the ISIS view on the Middle East (and half of Europe and Asia..)…

I wouldn’t say it’s “Israel” doing this, it’s a belief shared by many (of course not all!) Jews. When your entire ethnic group has only a single tiny country in the entire world that it can call home you tend to take threats against it very seriously. Especially since most Jews in Israel are from the Middle East and if Israel didn’t exist they would literally have no other country in the region they could live in.

Have you been to New York or Boca?

/s

(asking in jest as a jew)

Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the difference in the number of participants and base of support is material. That said, the 2018 protests were definitely more disruptive than this one. 20,000 employees left their desks. [1] Part of it might also be that several of the organizers of the 2018 walkouts left Google in the months following the walkouts (including Meredith Whittaker, who now runs the company behind Signal). I think my original a…

Walkouts are very different in character. It's a mini-strike, not an occupation. People voluntarily leave their jobs for a day, they don't sit in someone else's workspace and prevent them from doing theirs. Sure, it's more disruptive to the company because the numbers are larger, but the damage done by each individual ends at not doing their work for the day. It's a statement of "this is what your company will look l…

This is a very selective and ahistorical definition of "strike". Strikes regularly block shipping lanes and scab workers from entering so they often prevent others from doing work on a job site.

Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

#145

> This is a marked departure from the way Google has handled employee dissent in the past. In 2018, more than 600 Google workers signed an open letter opposing Project Dragonfly, an effort to build a search engine for China. As The Verge reported at the time, the petition began with an internally shared Google Doc, and all subsequent steps were also organized using Google products. Employees also urged Google to drop…

>> Google's approach today, versus how it reacted to the backlash against Maven in 2018, reflects a very different company with a different attitude toward the opinions of its employees I guess that's one possibility. Another possibility is that the owners and board of Google have a very different attitude towards protests in favor of Palestinians than the owners and board of Google had towards other protests in the…

These protests aren’t in favour of Palestinians, they’re specifically against Israel, and empower and excuse a racist death cult that has taken over Gaza.

Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

#146
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is an extreme assumption on your part. It's not. As I said, that's what I take from a video where a string of people had some of the best paying jobs available to any kind of worker, and at one of the most significant companies in the world right now, but don't seem to appreciate how fortunate they were to be in that situation or that they are replaceable. > hoping for reason and empathy to prevail "Reason" is…

> I'm just remarking on how these individuals don't seem to realize what they had and what they've likely lost. Why do you keep doing this?

The person you are responding to has provide supporting arguments in their comment. If you have a response to those arguments, make it.

Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

#147
> “There’s been a total change in the way Google responds to employees trying to have a voice in their workplace,” the fired software engineer said. “It’s night and day from the Google of even five, 10 years ago.”

Having a political voice is different than having a voice against sexual harassment at the workplace. Please don't mix things that don't belong together. Radically expressing your political voice during your job duties will get you fired in almost all companies. SV was very lax with this in the past. They just adjusted to how it is normally handled in corporate.

Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walkouts are very different in character. It's a mini-strike, not an occupation. People voluntarily leave their jobs for a day, they don't sit in someone else's workspace and prevent them from doing theirs. Sure, it's more disruptive to the company because the numbers are larger, but the damage done by each individual ends at not doing their work for the day. It's a statement of "this is what your company will look l…

This is a very selective and ahistorical definition of "strike". Strikes regularly block shipping lanes and scab workers from entering so they often prevent others from doing work on a job site.

Have you seen this done in recent years?

I've personally seen AT&T employees go on strike but they were nothing like this. The employees on strike wouldn't go to work, and there were signs and a few people sitting at tables near the entrance to main office buildings in Atlanta, but nothing was blocked and the people there sure seemed more like they were paid by the union to be there and didn't really care at all.

Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

#149
post #8

[flagged]

> where the most prominent voices support Hamas and what they did on Oct 7th This is a pretty unsupportable take from where I'm standing. Maybe we are in separate bubbles, but very little of the stuff I've seen/read is _in support of_ Oct 7th. Vast majority of voices condemn the attacks, request immediate ceasefire and immediate return of hostages. I know that line so well because of how much I've heard it.

> Maybe we are in separate bubbles, but very little of the stuff I've seen/read is _in support of_ Oct 7th.

You should be able to find it pretty easily. Specifically you will find

- people saying that all resistance is justified including the October 7 attacks.

- You will also see people carrying the flag of the organisation that carried out the Oct 7 attacks.

- Proclaiming glory and martyrdom to specific terrorists that participated in the October 7 attacks.

- Claiming that people that participated in other violent attacks against Jews (stabbings, bombings) are simply innocent prisoners.

- Proclaiming that intifada (which previously resulted in violent action against Jewish people worldwide) is the only solution

Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

#150
Extremely unsurprising that they got fired and it seems somewhat far fetched. If your employer works as a military contractor for a state which actions you oppose so much that you engage in a protest, then obviously you can not work there.

If you vehemently oppose US military involvement in the world you should not work at Raytheon. It simply is an arrangement which can not work, neither you, nor your employer should be interested.

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