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Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

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Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#531

Post by BickNowstrom »

drakonka wrote: post #409

It feels weird for me to read comments in this thread debating about and assuming a simple note about unionization or organization by an employee whose job it was to do exactly this kind of thing is "not in good faith" or a "violation". In my mind this kind of thing has the same sentiment as _any_ policy notice. The world in which notifying people that they have the right to organize is a "violation" is a really mess…

I would start protesting Google if they did not fire a security engineer for abusing systems like this. A security engineer subverting internal security systems is what is messed up. Turning it all in a horrible PR story about a retaliatory union-busting firing should disqualify your career for many years to come. Maybe she can exchange this loss of career prospect for some activism credit against the Big Bad Google.

Performance does not matter: fire both the genius and the slacker for abuse. The factual content of the message does not matter: fire both those who lie, spam, or those who distribute relevant activist messages. Legally required company does not matter: if it is not your role, it is not your role (distributing these "facts" was never part of her job description, it has nothing to do with security. It is also naive to assume Googlers visiting that very website would be interested or unaware of this policy notice).

The controversy is because people have different opinions: those who feel activism trumps profession, and those who feel it don't. Like said, any company that employs security engineers who hold their activism as more important than their profession is a dangerous company worth avoiding. I am glad this firing happened.

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#532

Post by scarface74 »

CharlesColeman wrote: post #481
scarface74 wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that means she should be able to inject her opinion on any site that she doesn’t like?

> So that means she should be able to inject her opinion on any site that she doesn’t like? Just to be clear: her "opinion" is "don't take actions that would cause the company to break federal labor law."

Is she part of the company’s legal team?

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#534

Post by ggggtez »

workthrowaway wrote: post #507
drakonka wrote: post #409

It feels weird for me to read comments in this thread debating about and assuming a simple note about unionization or organization by an employee whose job it was to do exactly this kind of thing is "not in good faith" or a "violation". In my mind this kind of thing has the same sentiment as _any_ policy notice. The world in which notifying people that they have the right to organize is a "violation" is a really mess…

you forgot that some of us are debating the sign-off process as well. the most surprising aspect if you ask me...

>“You’re allowed to put posters up on the wall to help organize your workers, and this can be seen as kind of a digital extension of that,” said Veena Dubal, a professor at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.

This professor completely ignores the sign-off, and I wonder if actually it's really important... Can we really call it a digital-extension of a wall, if it's impossible to put something without 2 approvals?

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#535

Post by nooglersanon »

cj wrote: post #5

> Kathryn Spiers, who worked as a security engineer, updated an internal Chrome browser extension so that each time Google employees visited the website of IRI Consultants — the Troy, Michigan, firm that Google hired this year amid a groundswell of labor activism at the company — they would see a pop-up message that read: “Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities.” So basically, the Go…

> So basically, the Google employee added arbitrary javascript to an internal chrome extension used by Google employees that triggered a popup when employees visited a specific website.

This is actually false (it's not listed in the article, so I wouldn't expect you to know). It was a config file containing URL patterns and plain text messages. Most messages were things like: "please don't upload random company files to dropbox.com/upload".

So my take is that this employee's job responsibilities probably involved notifying sending these types of notifications. However I'd actually agree that there was some "abuse" because letting someone know they are about to upload a file to dropbox is pretty different than using it as a forum to remind people that organizing is a protected activity. I wouldn't fire someone over that because despite them being in the wrong, it doesn't seem malicious.

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#536

Post by tomerico »

It looks like Kathryn posted her side here - https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/17/google-has-fired-another-w...

A few interesting tidbits: 1. She received extraordinary performance ratings during her short time at google, and got promoted recently 2. Google has not acted this aggressively in the past, where someone deploy a change in people’s Linux wallpaper while the protest happened. 3. She limited the notification to just people visiting the union busting firm

Given those, it does looks like an unusually aggressive response from Google, which would imply that Google has become very aggressive when it comes to unions.

With that said, it is also mentioned in her post that it took several weeks of investigation from Google until they made the final call, which could imply that there is more of a back story here.

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#538

Post by cousin_it »

scarmig wrote: post #512
helen___keller wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agreed with this at first, but according to her medium post ( https://medium.com/@ksspiers/google-fires-another-worker-for... ) "Part of my job was to write browser notifications so that my coworkers can be automatically notified of employee guidelines and company policies while they surf the web" If this is true and her job is literally to create javascript notifications of company policy, then I think it's entire…

The extension is intended to inform Googlers of applications that are not approved for corp data, not just generic "employee guidelines and company policies." This is so you don't e.g. upload PII into a random unsecured S3 bucket. Yes, it's company policy, but this is more like running into a meeting and then interrupting it so you can start reciting NLRB policy than it is posting a flyer. Worse, it misappropriates a…

Confirming this. The extension says it's for information security and privacy policy.

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#540

Post by btilly »

vonmoltke wrote: post #497
TallGuyShort wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very reminiscent of laws regarding jury nullification, and how the practice may be legal, but in some jurisdictions / cases it can be illegal to inform a jury of that fact.

That's because it's not legal. It's a violation of the jury's duty to render a verdict based on the law and the facts presented. Stating an intention to vote a certain way without respect to the law and facts is grounds for removal from the jury. See https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/jury_nullification and the referenced court case.

It's a violation of the jury's duty to render a verdict based on the law and the facts presented.

Who assigned the jury that duty? And when did that happen?

Per http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/zenger/nullifi... and other sources that I have seen, the understanding of the law when the Constitution was written was that juries should judge both the law and the facts. The view that they should not judge the law only arose decades later in the late 1800s. The fact that the legal profession today sees jurors as having a duty to NOT judge the law I see as undermining the intent of having jury trials in the first place.

The understanding of jury trials when the Constitution was written was that juries had a right and obligation to judge both the law and the facts. The first laws

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