I wonder, would there be a difference if the employees had to kill women en children themselves and if so, how many steps of automation would make it?
Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint
191–200 of 405 posts
Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like I have to push back against the idea that it is "radical" to object to your labor being used in a genocide. Am I the only one that feels like this is a fairly straightforward moral issue, and one I would expect to -- at the very least -- be allowed to express myself about. I also think the resolution of the moral issue is fairly straightforward, but I accept that there will be multiple opinions there. Sti…
They're free to leave and should state their reasons. What they're not free to do is disrupt the mission of the company and feel entitled to do so without any consequences. These people weren't fired because they answered some question incorrectly on a mandatory survey. They laid on the floor, prevented people from doing their work and harassed people making many feel uncomfortable. When you see someone like that beh…
Please reread the article, if only the first sentence, which is helpfully formatted in bold type. You missed some crucial details about who was doing what among the fired people.
Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their actions achieved nothing of consequence. I don't see how that makes them "heroes", even from the point of view of someone that supports their views.
> Their actions achieved nothing of consequence. They accomplished me never responding to Google recruiter emails and informing others in my network to avoid Google where they can be fired for happening upon a protest at work.
That might make them Google's heroes.
Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Still, people supporting Israel have not been fired I've worked in past with people who were very passionate Gaza supporters. And they received nothing but praise, but their work may have supported people involved with Oct 7th massacres. Should they be fired too?
I don't see how that relates to my point. My point is that repercussions are happening to one side of the issue: those opposing genocide and apartheid. Two things I was sure of everyone could agree on are some of the most horrendous crimes against humanity you can commit. The genocide has been ongoing for multiple decades, Israel routinely bombs civilians in Gaza, and any Palestinians living in Israel have essentiall…
How is it a genocide if the victims have a larger population in the same location than when it started?
Not every bad thing or territorial war, even of conquest, is a genocide.
Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint
#195> 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…
> This is the most interesting part of the article for me. 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 have two theories, both come with no warranty:
- Google is alarmed at how much "trust and safety" affected their ability to deliver LLMs, and is listening fractionally less to people of this political viewpoint
- Google has more existential threats and no more ridiculous ZIRP to coast along on, and so needs real income from customers that value it
- The Google department that owns this contract has some clout, and wanted to show its high-paying customer that it wasn't going to be swayed by the politics of its staff members
Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The bigger issue with the term "strike" here is that Google isn't unionized (yes, I know AWU exists, but it's less than 1% of their workforce)
If they were unionised the workers wouldn't have been paid for the walkout, presumably.
Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, go ahead and file a complaint, right? But my read of the situation while skimming the NLRB summary [1] is this complaint is unlikely to win > Strikes unlawful because of misconduct of strikers or other loss of protection. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a “sitdown” strike, when employees simply stay in the plant and refuse to work is not protected by the law. This feels pertinent, but not a whole match.…
The key difference here is that Google really wants the DoD contract and doesn’t care who’s on the losing side of the real battle. The Google Walkout in the wake of Andy Rubin, David Drummond etc was far more disruptive to their business yet Google on paper felt they got a great deal on the severance packages of Rubin and Drummond ($0). Or at least Sundar was proud of how he cleaned up those messes.
Rubin got $90M as a gift from Google, beyond what was negotiated.
Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like I have to push back against the idea that it is "radical" to object to your labor being used in a genocide. Am I the only one that feels like this is a fairly straightforward moral issue, and one I would expect to -- at the very least -- be allowed to express myself about. I also think the resolution of the moral issue is fairly straightforward, but I accept that there will be multiple opinions there. Sti…
They're free to leave and should state their reasons. What they're not free to do is disrupt the mission of the company and feel entitled to do so without any consequences. These people weren't fired because they answered some question incorrectly on a mandatory survey. They laid on the floor, prevented people from doing their work and harassed people making many feel uncomfortable. When you see someone like that beh…
Getting publicly fired and then using your labor rights and bureaucratic processes to draw out the issue seems like a much more effective form of protest than just quitting. Their tactics are good here.
Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
At almost every company I've worked over the years, I had to go through countless mandatory annual trainings that effectively says expressing opinions on non work related subjective political topics with coworkers/employer is not advisable, risky and can be grounds for termination in extreme cases. Either these people genuinely believed there was scope for discussion, or believed their opinion/choice of topic is a PR…
This was most certainly work related. It was about a Google contract which is 100% related to Google and workers at Google.
It's a stretch to call it work related for the person protesting. If it were, the simple act of not working would be sufficient protest against the opposed work.
Re: Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their actions achieved nothing of consequence. I don't see how that makes them "heroes", even from the point of view of someone that supports their views.
> Their actions achieved nothing of consequence. They accomplished me never responding to Google recruiter emails and informing others in my network to avoid Google where they can be fired for happening upon a protest at work.
I would say google is more than okay with that.