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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

#291

Post by DangitBobby »

llm_nerd wrote: post #172
_heimdall wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a reasonable assumption that the person in question here didn't think it through if they're filing complaints over the firing. If you disagree with the company you work for and choose to protest disruptively at the office, and know that could lead to being fired, why file a complaint when that happens? And when filing the complaint, is the goal really to get your job back? At least for me, I can't speak for other…

In the video I link at the base of this thread multiple participants declare that they did not expect to get fired. They don't call their firing consequences, they call it retaliation. They end the video by declaring that they should all be reinstated because they did nothing wrong. Loads of internet posters very strongly and emotionally declared that they all knew that they'd be fired, including in this thread. That…

> They don't call their firing consequences, they call it retaliation.

Well, it is retaliation. The consequences were retaliation by Google. It's maybe just not prohibited retaliation under the law.

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

#292

Post by giraffe_lady »

nickff wrote: post #279
giraffe_lady wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, whether they did that is not completely clear? That's what the process is there to decide right. But in any case and far more importantly protests have goals they want to achieve and being a pain in the ass is absolutely a valid tactic. Protest movements have rarely accomplished their aims by acting fully within the social preferences of their opponents.

The problem with this logic is that I’m not sure you’d want it applied when the tables are turned. How would you feel if Israel-supporting lawyers started filing frivolous nuisance suits against these protesters? Still fair game? Keep in mind that these junk suits (in both directions), have negative impacts on other people trying to access the justice system for legitimate reasons.

They already do that. And some or maybe all of these people will never be hired again because of zionist activism.

Principled restraint from an effective technique has never deterred an opponent from using it themselves.

Like look at the last decade of the democrats and their deference to decorum and what that has accomplished.

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

#293

Post by DangitBobby »

sevagh wrote: post #137
glimshe wrote: post #135

Anyone can sue or complain about anyone else. It doesn't mean that they will get anything out of it. In this particular case, I'm seeing many people who support their message speaking against what they did.

I had a similar moral conflict at a workplace and I dealt with it by resigning. Despite my outrage, I can't imagine occupying the office of my boss as an acceptable move. It's not illegal for my company to do business I disagree with, and if I don't like it, I leave. Simple.

Resigning under protest isn't really effective unless you are difficult to replace. Even in that scenario, you can almost certainly "protest" more effectively by speaking out and seeking targeted changes and then ultimately resigning or forcing them to fire you when they don't change. Protesting is at its core being an un-ignorable pain in the ass until a problem gets fixed. Resigning is pretty ignorable, especially if your reasons for doing so are not clear.

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

#294

Post by devsda »

bjourne wrote: post #283
devsda wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No thanks. I'm not really keen on doxxing myself. But hey, if you are an IT employee and haven't had to go through those annoying trainings I'd be surprised and a little jealous.

Well, if you aren't keen on doxxing yourself you shouldn't use arguments that require the reader to trust you. Internet is full of liars who claim to be everything from astronauts, to law professors, to IT employees who have gone through "countless mandatory annual trainings that effectively says expressing opinions on non work related subjective political topics with coworkers/employer is not advisable". I have not…

> Internet is full of liars who claim to be everything from astronauts, to law professors,

And bitter people too I suppose.

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

#295

Post by racional »

worried4future wrote: post #285
racional wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a gross misreading of what the article actually said. The real meat the article (as reflected very clearly in its original title, not the mangled caption that was unfortunately used for the post; and throughout the article body itself) is that Google apparently fired some 20+ employees who either weren't involved the protest at all, or whose alleged participation remains unclear. As if the higher-ups got toge…

> Google apparently fired some 20+ employees who either weren't involved the protest at all, or whose alleged participation remains unclear Maybe that's true, maybe it's not, but there is deep information asymmetry here and google has all the advantage and must have anticipated that this would end up in discovery and litigation and that the records of the terminated people's employment would be subject to it. That me…

I have a hard time believing that google would have fired people where the sum of their recorded actions couldn't be reasonably construed to be disruptive.

From the article:

“When I got there, there were probably 20-ish people sitting on the floor. I didn’t talk to any of them, I talked to folks who were standing up, passing out flyers, doing other roles,” he said, adding that the protesters were wearing matching T-shirts.

The worker then went back to his desk before returning to the protest around 5PM. “I chatted with them for maybe four minutes, like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re still sitting here! How’s it going?’” he said. Then, he finished the workday from a nearby couch. The worker says he returned to Google the following day without incident. That night, while at dinner, he got an email from Google saying he had been terminated.

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

#296

Post by Georgelemental »

Willish42 wrote: post #87
Georgelemental wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Floyd riots did lead to several deaths and billions of dollars in damage, documentation of that is an internet search away. Completely different from the current round of protests against Israeli brutality (which, unlike "systemic racism", is actually real)

> which, unlike "systemic racism", is actually real If you truly think the concept of systemic racism does not exist, your warped perspective is probably beyond saving. The term itself dates back to the 60s and has a long history of academic and real-world relevance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism With where political discourse in developed nations has gotten, I really shouldn't be surprised, but…

> The term itself dates back to the 60s

Systemic racism did exist in the 60s, of course. (One good empirical test: during the era of Jim Crow, many black people tried to pass as white so as to gain access to the opportunities that were denied to black people. Does this still happen today, or is the reverse more likely?)

> statistically proven cases of disproportionate policing of certain races of individuals

Not when you look at the actual data: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1903856116

(Yes, the article is retracted. If you read the correction and rectraction, you will see that the authors stand by their results, and retracted only due to political pressure/politically incorrect people citing the study.)

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

#298

Post by 6510 »

racional wrote: post #284
worried4future wrote: post #9

The meat of it is here: > Google “retaliated against approximately 50 employees and interfered with their Section 7 rights by terminating and/or placing them on administrative leave in response to their protected concerted activity, namely, participation (or perceived participation) in a peaceful, non-disruptive protest that was directly and explicitly connected to their terms and conditions of work,” the complaint r…

This is a gross misreading of what the article actually said. The real meat the article (as reflected very clearly in its original title, not the mangled caption that was unfortunately used for the post; and throughout the article body itself) is that Google apparently fired some 20+ employees who either weren't involved the protest at all, or whose alleged participation remains unclear. As if the higher-ups got toge…

Reminds me of the Chinese social credit system. Having an opinion is terrible, talking with someone who has an opinion is arguably worse! That is how the disease spreads! The signal is that you should cover your ears and run away.

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

#299

Post by lagichikool »

tovej wrote: post #277
gataca wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are arguing about the meaning of words, especially words thrown around as libels to try and delegitimize justified self defense. I'm sorry if the facts don't agree with your desires for something to be true. War is terrible and civilians die in all wars, especially those in urban areas where one party tunnels underneath civilian infrastructure to protect themselves while leaving civilians exposed to fire.

It is not libel to say that the ICJ's statement is a strong indication that a genocide is ongoing. What Joan Donoghue says is that, technically, there is no ruling on the "plausibility of genocide claims". Which is a technical legal claim separate from the sentiment in the ruling. Yes, the ICJ has not made a ruling on the plausibility because the legal process has not come far enough to make such a ruling. This does…

"It is not libel to say that the ICJ's statement is a strong indication that a genocide is ongoing"

"This does not mean that the ruling does not indicate that the court thinks a genocide is occurring."

You've seen the video and are continuing to disagree with what the ICJ president herself has explicitly said. If you want to claim that Israel is committing genocide, you're free to do so, but don't continue to lie to yourself or others about what the ICJ has said now that you have been corrected.

"If you simply look at the definition of a genocide and the facts on the ground, you should quite easily come to the conclusion that this is a genocide..."

If you simply look at Israel government's military capabilities and the facts on the ground, should quite easily come to the conclusion that genocide is not the goal.

The Israel government's intention is clearly to kill enemy soldiers, even if it means killing civilians in the process. This is the same attitude that most countries have adopted in times of war.

The Allies did horrendously unethical things (like fire bombing millions of civilians) during WW2 but even that wasn't genocide.

Claiming that Israel's government is committing war crimes is a much more reasonable argument. It may not be true but it's not obviously false, the way the genocide claim is.

Ask yourself what Israel would do if every member of Hamas was willing to march out to a battlefield and meet them head-to-head in a large scale battle. Would Israel keep sending bombs at houses or would they target that battlefield?

Most people could be convinced that the right-wing Israel government is being unnecessarily brutal and hamfisted in their response to the Oct 7 attacks. If the goal was to convince more people to pressure Israel, that would be possible.

But the insistence upon specific word use ("genocide") is a transparent attempt at signalling in-group and out-group status. This has been a common pattern among political extremists for a long time. There's always some kind of rationalization about why its important but it's never the real reason.

Being divisive is the point.

Just like Trump's adherents signal their in-group status by pretending the 2020 Election was "stolen" so do the extreme left's adherents signal their in-group status by claiming Israel is committing a "genocide".

In both cases, the goal is not to actually convince people of something that is obviously false. The purpose is to have a loyalty test that can be used to differentiate friend and foe.

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

#300

Post by smsm42 »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #271
krapp wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conservatives speak up all the time on HN, and weirdly enough they sound exactly like you do, down to the inability to refer to the left without a pejorative.

Conservatives ignorantly tend to refer to everything to the left of them as "liberals" even to behavior that is quite illiberal, so the distinction is important. But you're welcome to believe whatever you wish; it's a free country.

> as "liberals" even to behavior that is quite illiberal

That's actually the label the left has taken on themselves, blaming conservatives for it is really weird. Yes, the behavior of the modern left has little to do with the classical liberalism, but it's not the conservatives' fault that the left took on themselves this mantle and then failed to live up to it.

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