(NewsNation) — Twenty-eight Google Cloud Services employees who were fired in New York and California say their terminations will only fuel organic growth of a movement called “No Tech for Apartheid.”
The former employees and other protesters are demanding an end to Project Nimbus, a major Google contract with the state of Israel. It’s said to include Google facial recognition technology allegedly used by the Israeli military in Gaza.
The coordinated actions inside the company caused lengthy disruptions as protesters staged a 10-hour sit-in on both coasts. The California action targeted the office of a top executive.
“A couple of us Google workers are sitting in at Thomas Kurian’s office, the CEO of Google Cloud, to demand an end to the contract Project Nimbus, which is a $1.2 billion contract between the state of Israel and the Israeli military, the Israeli defense forces, our contract between and Amazon cloud services and AWS and Google Cloud,” a worker said.
In a statement, the company defended the 28-person firing, saying in part, “Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior.”
The coast-to-coast protests also involved Google workers in Seattle.
It’s not clear yet if any of the fired employees worked directly on Project Nimbus.
Google’s statement also mentioned that it will continue to investigate and take action as needed.