Google terminates 28 employees for protesting Israeli cloud contract

Google terminates 28 employees for protesting Israeli cloud contract

Google said on Thursday it had terminated 28 employees after some employees joined protests over the company’s cloud contract with the Israeli government.

The Alphabet ( GOOGL.O ) unit said a small number of protesting workers entered and disrupted work at several unspecified office locations.

“Physically obstructing the work of other employees and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable conduct,” the company said in a statement.

Google said it has completed individual investigations, resulting in the termination of 28 employees, and will continue to investigate and take action as necessary.

In a statement on Medium, Google employees affiliated with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign called it a “blatant act of retaliation” and said that some employees who did not directly participate in Tuesday’s protests were also among those fired by Google .

“Google employees have the right to peacefully protest our labor terms and conditions,” the statement added.

The opposing factions say that Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract awarded to Google and Amazon.com ( AMZN.O ) in 2021 to supply cloud services to the Israeli government, supports the development of military equipment by the Israeli government.

In its statement, Google emphasized that the Nimbus contract “is not intended for highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads related to weapons or intelligence services.”

Protests at Google are nothing new. In 2018, employees successfully pushed the company to suspend a contract with the US military, Project Maven, which aims to analyze aerial drone imagery with potential applications in warfare.