Almost 100,000 Google employees are about to get a hard-fought $20

A long-running lawsuit involving tens of thousands of Google workers is coming to an anticlimactic end.

Google has agreed to settle a lawsuit from 2016 that outlined the Bay Area tech giant’s strict confidentiality policies for workers. The suit helped launch a wave of employee activism in the industry, and has been litigated across seven years and thousands of pages of court documents. In the end, Google will pay out only $27 million, a drop in the bucket for such a titanic company — and just a fraction of that money will actually go to workers.

The suit, filed by an unnamed Google product manager from San Francisco, alleged that the company’s confidentiality agreements were illegal. The plaintiff alleged that Google prohibited workers from speaking to the press, disclosing how much they earned, telling others about their working conditions and reporting rule violations to Securities and Exchange Commission workers. The lawsuit also shared details about various alleged anti-whistleblowing measures.

The lawsuit was filed under California’s Private Attorneys General Act, which oversees labor code violations; plaintiffs can sue companies on behalf of California and a class of fellow “aggrieved employees.” The state’s Labor and Workforce Development Agency, which oversees worker protections and benefit programs, gets the lion’s share of any agreed-to penalty or settlement in this type of lawsuit.

Based on the settlement agreement approved in court Monday, about a third of the sum will go to the plaintiffs’ attorneys. Of the remaining money, the state agency takes about three-fourths. That means the 96,939 Google workers in the “aggrieved employees” class will split around $4.4 million.

That’s about $45 each on average, the lawsuit notes. The actual individual payments will be calculated based on the employee’s tenure with the company, but each one will receive at least a fixed payment of $20, with an additional $22 to $59 tacked on for many.

For context: Google parent company Alphabet turned almost $20 billion in profit last quarter alone on nearly $77 billion in revenue, according to an October filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 2022, CEO Sundar Pichai’s total compensation was almost $226 million, according to an April filing.

The settlement sum of $27 million is paltry by comparison. The alleged confidentiality policies affected tens of thousands of Google workers and the case, as Semafor’s Reed Albergotti put it Friday, “helped spark a major turning point in the industry” by paving the way for more criticism of tech companies and their cultures of silence.

“As certain tech firms grew into giants, their labor forces were changing,” Albergotti wrote. “These weren’t startup employees willing to do anything for their employer. Many of them were just regular, white-collar workers and they expected to be treated that way.”

The unnamed engineer plaintiff began the lawsuit by writing, “Google’s motto is ‘don’t be evil.’ Google’s illegal confidentiality agreements, policies, and practices fail this test.”

Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini wrote in a statement to SFGATE on Monday, “While we strongly believe in the legitimacy of our policies, after nearly eight years of litigation, Google decided that resolution of the matter, without any admission of wrongdoing, is in the best interest of everyone.”

Hear of anything happening at Google or another tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at [email protected] or on Signal at 628-204-5452.