Google fires 28 workers in protest of a $1.2 billion contract with Israel

Google has fired more than two dozen employees in protest of the company's $1.2 billion contract to supply cloud and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli government and military.

The 28 layoffs follow the arrest of nine employees Tuesday night following a sit-in at the company's offices in Seattle, New York, and Sunnyvale, California — including the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, according to the group that organized the demonstration. Technology for apartheid.

Protesters sat in his office for more than nine hours, wearing T-shirts and holding signs reading “No More Genocide for Profit,” until they were eventually arrested.

This is the latest high-profile clash in the United States sparked by tensions over the war between Israel and Hamas.

“These protests were part of a long-standing campaign by a group of organizations and people who largely do not work at Google,” a Google spokesperson told NBC News in a statement on Wednesday.

“A small number of protesting employees entered and disrupted a few of our locations. Physically obstructing other employees and denying them access to our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior. After multiple requests to leave the building were denied, law enforcement is working on Removed to ensure office safety.

She added: “So far, we have completed individual investigations that led to the termination of 28 employees, and we will continue to investigate and take necessary action as needed.”

The protests were led by No Tech for Apartheid, a group of tech workers who demanded that Amazon and Google abandon Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion joint contract that provides the Israeli government and military with cloud infrastructure, artificial intelligence services and data centers. .

No Tech for Apartheid said Google fired employees “randomly” and that the workers engaged in a “peaceful sit-in and refusal to leave that did not damage property or threaten other workers.”

“This excuse to avoid confronting us and our concerns directly, and trying to justify unlawful retaliatory firings, is a lie,” she said in a statement issued late Wednesday, accusing the company of valuing its contract with the Israeli government more than its employees. .

Google issued a stern warning to its employees, with the company's vice president of global security, Chris Racco, saying: “If you're one of the few who tend to think we'll ignore behavior that violates our policies, think again,” according to an internal memo obtained by CNBC.

The company also said its work “is not directed to highly sensitive, classified or military workloads related to weapons or intelligence services.”

“Google Cloud supports many governments around the world in the countries where we operate, including the Israeli government, with our publicly available cloud computing services,” a Google spokesperson told CNBC on Wednesday evening.

The Israeli Prime Minister's Office and the Israel Defense Forces did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News.

The workers were also protesting working conditions at the company — saying the contract affected “health and safety at work” — and what they said was Google’s disregard for “the well-being of our Palestinian, Arab and Muslim colleagues.” Confrontation Racism, discrimination, harassment and censorship supported by Google.”

The project has become a “major workplace health and safety issue,” with several employees quitting after citing “the mental health consequences of working for a company that uses their workers to enable genocide,” the group said in a statement posted on its website. Mediation Wednesday.

“Personally, I'm opposed to Google getting any military contracts — regardless of which government you're dealing with or exactly what the contract is about,” Cheney Anderson, a Google Cloud software engineer based in Washington, told CNBC on Wednesday.

Anderson was one of nine workers arrested across the country on Tuesday, and some of those arrests were streamed live on Twitch.

Four people were arrested for “trespassing” inside Google's New York office, an NYPD spokesperson told NBC News on Wednesday. The spokesman said that about 50 demonstrators participated in the demonstration.