Google fired 28 employees Thursday following sit-ins at the company’s New York and Sunnyvale, California, offices.
Workers at both offices staged the demonstrations Tuesday to protest Google‘s participation in Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract with Israel that provides the Jewish state with access to Google‘s machine learning and cloud computing technology.
The deal, according to the protesters, has a clause that prevents Google from backing out of the contract if pressured by activists.
“A small number of employee protestors entered and disrupted a few of our locations. Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior,” Google said in a statement.
The workers who participated in the sit-in said that providing cloud computing and machine learning technology to the Israeli government implicates Google in what they called genocide in Gaza.
The Google protests underscore a larger debate in workplaces across the country about the war between Israel and Hamas. Since the conflict started after the Oct. 7 slaughter of Israelis by Hamas terrorists, calls for boycotts against companies that operate in or do business with Israel have intensified.
Starbucks and McDonald’s have experienced boycotts and protests from employees and customers.
• Vaughn Cockayne can be reached at vcockayne@washingtontimes.com.
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