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The
Alphabet unit said a small number of protesting employees
entered and disrupted work at a few unspecified office
locations.
"Physically impeding other employees' work and preventing them
from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our
policies, and completely unacceptable behavior," the company
said in a statement.
Google said it had concluded individual investigations,
resulting in the termination of 28 employees, and would continue
to investigate and take action as needed.
In a statement on Medium, Google workers affiliated with the No
Tech for Apartheid campaign called it a "flagrant act of
retaliation" and said that some employees who did not directly
participate in Tuesday's protests were also among those Google
fired.
"Google workers have the right to peacefully protest about terms
and conditions of our labor," the statement added.
The protesting faction says that Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion
contract awarded to Google and Amazon.com in 2021 to supply the
Israeli government with cloud services, supports the development
of military tools by the Israeli government.
In its statement, Google maintained that the Nimbus contract "is
not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military
workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services."
Protests at Google are not new. In 2018, workers successfully
pushed the company to shelve a contract with the U.S. military,
Project Maven, meant to analyze aerial drone imagery with
potential application in warfare.
(Reporting by Yuvraj Malik in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)
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