Google fired 28 employees after a series of protests against the company’s contract to provide the Israeli government and military with cloud computing and artificial intelligence services.
Google is one of several employers pushing back on employee activism. At the same time, there has been a call for civility in the workplace and reasonable conversations among co-workers who disagree.
We’ve rounded up articles and resources from SHRM Online and other outlets to provide more context on the news.
Agitation Over Conflict in Gaza
The terminations followed rallies outside Google offices in New York, Sunnyvale, Calif., and Seattle, which attracted hundreds of attendees. The protests were led by the No Tech For Apartheid organization and focused on Project Nimbus—Google and Amazon’s joint $1.2 billion contract to provide the Israeli government and military with cloud computing services, including AI tools, data centers and other cloud infrastructure. The protest group said they fear the technology could be used in the war in Gaza.
(CNBC)
Change in Direction
The action taken by Google is the most recent and starkest example of companies’ stricter stance on employee activism and dissent. Google leaders said the protesting workers violated company policy by taking over office spaces and disrupting work. While preserving the company’s open culture is important, Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote to staff afterward, “we also need to be more focused in how we work, collaborate, discuss and even disagree.”
Incivility More Common
Disagreement over hot-button issues can lead to incidents of incivility in the workplace. SHRM research reveals that incivility has become a regular occurrence at work. A survey of over 1,000 U.S. employees found that two-thirds of workers (66 percent) say they have experienced or witnessed incivility in their workplace within the past month and over half (57 percent) have experienced or witnessed incivility at work within the past week.
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