I am seeing a lot of comments on here but the context not being mentioned is that they were protesting while clocked in or working on the clock.
Google is technically in authority to do that. The article is worded a bit out of context to make the act of protesting an a big company we all find to be evil more evil for letting employees go that were wasting company time.
I get it before you even type it I understand Google isn’t short on money and the time portion won’t effect them but has the employees protested while clocked out this would have been a less likely outcome and I also get it, “yeah they would have fired them anyway.” Sure believe what you want but it doesn’t take away that Google had the authority to fire while the employees were in their time no matter what they were protesting. If I did this at my job and was getting paid they would fire me as well.
Confidentially incorrect: at Google there is no clock in and no clock out (for employees, contractors is different). At Google you can work 1h per day or 20h per day you earn the same. Performances are assessed on the output not on the hour worked.
So, no, find another reason for which Google is right. Popular topic is “they disrupt other people work by making noise” (of course people can work on a laptop in another place because there is generally no special equipment at the desk but details) or “they destroyed properties… you cannot see in the picture but they destroyed millions of precious bacteria on the floor”
I think that there are two main reasons that caused them to be fired: insubordination since they occupied the CEO’s office and refused to leave when asked (and probably he don’t asked only one time) which led to the second reason, they were arrested for trespassing in the CEO’s office.
As far as I heard (but I am not too familiar) the CEO is essentially never in the office.
Also, according to the video, the office is in California. People were arrested (and fired) in NY as well (where there is no such an office).
Yes, insubordination is the key point. But it’s also the key point of a protest. The take away is that Google doesn’t accept a protest (any more?)
Re trespassing: in the Google offices everyone can pretty much go to any office. They realistically didn’t break into but, sure, they were in an office that wasn’t theirs
does your job support a genocidal theocratic ethnostate?
It wouldn’t be a very effective protest if they did it on their own time lol
It’s not a protest if it doesn’t inconvenience who you’re protesting. All real protesters are arrested, because they inconvenience power (who have but the way made all inconvenient protests illegal).
I’m proud of these guys for standing up for what they believe in. Solidarity.
Protest should intend on being an inconvenience, though arrest should be avoided if at all possible. It absolutely kills longevity and leads to people making arrest a core intention while rambling about non-violence. Really what you want is to have strategy and numbers that spook cops enough to not bother because they won’t if they think its going to be too much trouble for them.
Agreed. I didn’t mean to imply arrest was the goal but rather a common side-effect of effective protest.
Does this mean there are new open positions at Google?
Wow, a genuine genocide supporter, would you look at that.
“Hmm, these people got arrested for being against genocide. Sounds like a great place for me to work!”
I sure hope you’re joking
You may underestimate the ongoing desperation for paid full time work with benefits in the US.
A lot of folk are one paycheck, one tragedy, one road accident or severe sickness away from homelessness.
And homelessness is already criminalized in some counties.
These are not the type of job for someone struggling so much. This is tech work. Googlers are very privileged.
Well, I probably cannot get in there anyway so it’s a bit moot. Plus it would mean a major relocation. But yeah, I’d happily work on an Israel contract.
Wow, that’s disgusting. Have you no morals? Shame on you.
“I sold my moral compass to
Lockheed MartinGoogle for 90k/year and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt”Are you trying to be funny?
There are plenty of people who support Israel and believe it is the moral thing to do. Morals are subjective and arbitrary. They cannot be used to judge one’s actions.
They cannot be used to judge one’s actions.
So, when I say it is my moral obligation to help rid the planet of conservatives because they are evil, I do hope you will not condemn my moral actions.
I don’t care.
Friendly reminder: There will always be scabs
Am I being an idiot for thinking that protesting like this, when the union is relatively small is counterproductive? I’d think I’d want to represent the majority of the workers, then protest or outright strike which will halt the cloud operations they want to halt, if that’s what the majority of union members vote to do.
I’m sure they’d love to have enough supporters to do a general strike, and those have been proposed and attempted over Gaza. Unfortunately, opposing Israel’s genocidal actions is not the mainstream view… especially being opposed enough to participate in activism. With only a handful of people, these sit-ins were able to disrupt the company and make news.
Well, it made the national news, so seems like it was somewhat effective.
Doesn’t matter, even if it was just two workers it’s still protected concerted activity which is illegal to retaliate against.
Trespassing is not a protected form of protest. Wtf are you talking about?
Indeed not. I was commenting on the scale of protestors, not trespass.
So You think they shouldn’t have done anything, because the union is not big enough? Moral is not an option with a small union? Am I getting this right?
I think it depends on the goal. If I’m trying to stop a corporation from doing something profitable a large union, one that contains most corpo workers, including the ones producing this profit, can strike, halting the production that generates this profit. The union could do this for a moral reason. If the union however contains for the sake of argument 1% of the workers and none of the ones doing the work in question, then staging a protest can’t force a stop to the morally reprehensible production. It also makes this 1% an easy target to get rid of thus making it harder to organize more workers needed to stop production. So if I wanted to gain this power over the corpo, I would probably protest outside of union capacity.
E: They’re already gone…
Yeah, american employee protection sucks … Where I live you could easily fight being fired for this. So maybe thats where our different stances come from.
If there is a criminal charge or conviction I think you would be fired in most countries.
This is probably why they called the cops, so they can fire them for an obvious cause and not have to deal with any questions.
What would be the crime here? Am I missing something? Protesting is not (or shouldn’t be) against the law, as long as you don’t behave illegally)
Reports seems to indicate that they were arrested for trespassing.
Ah that, yeah they were in the CEOs office. That might be misdemeanor, but is it a felony? Pretty sure you couldn’t be fired for this here.
Inconveniencing protests that go unrecognized or are criminalized lead to the next step: industrial sabotage.
Maybe Google needs to lose a few servers to captured NSO malware.
Who would’ve thought an evil company would mistreat its employees. They literally work for a corporation whose main business involves violating your human rights, if they really care they wouldn’t have worked there in the first place.
Instead they should just work for all those good companies that’s everywhere under capitalism. Workers don’t have a say in company policy and companies are as bad as they can be. The fact that nestle murder more people than Fazer , isn’t about that one is more “evil” than the other, it’s what they can get away with. Evil is a childish concept.
Google: don’t be --evil–
Well they actually changed the motto because “don’t be evil” was too ambiguous. The motto now is “do the right thing”. It’s now okay to be evil, as long as you’re “doing the right thing”.
Yeah, of all the things google has done, rewrite “don’t be evil” is really not one of them. Didn’t their parent company also pick up the motto as well?
Use two tildes (
~) before and after:Google: don't be ~~evil~~Google: don’t be
evilmore like google:
dontbe evilI don’t know, I kind of like the idea of someone deciding their company motto is to not exist at all.
Don’t be? Evil! A la Lionel Hutz
Say hello to Miguel Sanchez.
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What’s up with all the masks? Do they want to be anonymous?
yes, or they really should.
why organized labor isnt willing to kill, but still thinks they can be effective, is so far beyond me.
