9 Google employees arrested and 28 fired after sit-in to protest company contract with Israel
A banner hung by protesters who staged a sit-in Tuesday at Google’s New York City offices. Courtesy of No Tech For Apartheid
Google fired 28 people Wednesday after dozens of their employees staged sit-ins Tuesday at company offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California. Dozens of employees participated in the sit-ins and nine were arrested on Tuesday, one of the protesters told The Washington Post. The employees demanded that Google cut ties with Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion Israeli government contract for Google and Amazon’s cloud computing services. The New York Post reported that 28 employees were fired after the incident.
Protesters at the Sunnyvale location entered Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s office and those in New York gathered in a common area on the 10th floor of the company’s downtown offices. In both locations, the arrests occurred at about 10 p.m. Eastern Time — between eight and 10 hours after the the protests began. Larger groups of protesters demonstrated outside both offices, as well as a Google office in Seattle.
Google spokesperson Bailey Tomson told the Post that those arrested were put on administrative leave and denied access to the company’s online systems. He said the company called police after the protesters ignored several requests to leave.
“Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and we will investigate and take action,” he said.
The demonstrations were organized by No Tech For Apartheid, a coalition of tech workers and activists that formed shortly after Google signed on to Project Nimbus in 2021. On their website, the group calls April 16 ”‘No Tech For Genocide Day of Action.”
“Google workers do not want their labor to power apartheid and Genocide,” the website reads, a reference to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks.
Google Cloud spokesperson Anna Kowalczyk told The Verge that the protesters were “part of a longstanding campaign by a group of organizations and people who largely don’t work at Google.”
A few days before the demonstrations, Time magazine reported on a leaked document that showed Project Nimbus directly supports the Israeli Ministry of Defense. After the deal was signed in 2021, Israeli officials confirmed that Google and Amazon have no legal right to deny services to particular branches of the government.
Google has sought to distance itself from Project Nimbus’ military applications. In her email, Kowalczyk said Google’s work was “not directed at highly sensitive or classified military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.”
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