Dozens of Google workers who were fired after internal protests surrounding a lucrative contract that the technology company has with the Israeli government have filed a complaint with labor regulators in an attempt to get their jobs back.
The complaint filed late Monday with the National Labor Relations Board alleges about 50 workers were unfairly fired or placed on administrative leave earlier this month in the aftermath of employee sit-ins that occurred at Google offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California. The protests targeted a $1.2 billion deal known as Project Nimbus that provides artificial intelligence technology to the Israeli government. The fired works contend the system is being lethally deployed in the Gaza war — an allegation Google refutes.
Google jettisoned the workers’ “participation (or perceived participation) in a peaceful, non-disruptive protest that was directly and explicitly connected to their terms and conditions of work.”
I’m in the process of doing this with my former employer (NLRB complaint). It’s not as much trying to get your job back as getting what you’re owed, be it severance or your pound of flesh lol.
A lot of contracts specify that you have to go through arbitration to resolve disputes with the company as opposed to the courts, which is both good and bad. Bad because it takes a while and they’re usually all buddy buddy with the people who pay them, but good because arbitration is pretty expensive and making them do all this when they’d rather be done with you brings me joy.
Also this gives companies the opportunity to use more rope to hang themselves with if they try to do funny stuff with their arbitrator, the NLRB can overrule arbitration decisions if they’re “repugnant”.