Google fired one of its employees because he protested publicly, the reason being that the company worked for the Israeli military. Reported by CNBC.
This incident happened on Monday at the “Mind the Tech” conference in New York City. The now-former Google Cloud Engineer began speaking loudly: “I refuse to build technology that powers genocide or surveillance.”
In protest, he also said, “Project Nimbus puts Palestinian community members in danger.” Project Nimbus is a $1.2 billion Israeli government contract for access to cloud services from Google and Amazon.
“Ne cloud for apartheid,” a Google employee said at the time of the presentation.
BREAKING—PRO-PALESTINE @googlecloud ENGINEER DISRUPTS @Google ISRAEL DIRECTOR AT GOOGLE-SPONSORED ISRAELI TECH CONFERENCE IN NYC.
The worker demanded that Google STOP using worker labor to power genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. #NoTechForApartheid pic.twitter.com/t2mqCqFFay
— No Tech For Apartheid (@NoTechApartheid) March 4, 2024
Google has confirmed that the company fired an employee. Google spokesperson Bailey Tomson said, “Earlier this week, an employee disrupted a coworker giving a presentation, which interfered with an official company-sponsored event.” And also said, “This behaviour is not okay, regardless of the issue, and the employee was terminated for violating our policies.”
Some people are protesting on the road against Project Nimbus, “No Tech for Apartheid,” whose statement has been published. When Google HR asked him how he felt after being terminated, the terminated employee said, “I am proud to be fired for refusing to be complicit in genocide.”
