A
Google employee who became the most visible opponent
of a company contract with the Israeli military said on Tuesday that she would
resign after claiming Google had tried to retaliate against her for her
activism.
اضافة اعلان
The employee, Ariel Koren, a marketing
manager for Google’s educational products arm who has worked for the company
for seven years, wrote a memo to colleagues announcing her plan to leave Google
at the end of the week.
She spent more than a year organizing against
Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion agreement for Google and Amazon to supply Israel
and its military with artificial intelligence tools and other computing
services. Koren, 28, helped circulate petitions and lobby executives, and she
talked to news organizations, all in an effort to get Google to reconsider the
deal.
Then, in November, she said, came a
surprising ultimatum from Google: Agree to move to Sao Paulo, Brazil, within 17
business days or lose your job.
Koren marketed educational products to Latin
America and was based in Mexico City before moving to
San Francisco during the
pandemic. But, she said, there was not a clear business justification for the
mandated move or its urgency, and a supervisor in Brazil told her that employees
in Sao Paulo were working from home because of the pandemic.
Google and the National Labor Relations Board
investigated her complaint and found no wrongdoing.
Fifteen other Google employees posted audio
testimonies to YouTube on Tuesday asking the company not to work with Israel
and criticizing Google’s treatment of Palestinians and its censorship of
employees who support them. All but two of the workers spoke anonymously. They
released their remarks to coincide with Koren’s departure from the company.
“Google systematically silences
Palestinian,
Jewish, Arab, and Muslim voices concerned about Google’s complicity in
violations of Palestinian human rights — to the point of formally retaliating
against workers and creating an environment of fear,” Koren wrote in the letter
explaining her decision to resign.
Shannon Newberry, a Google spokesperson, said
in a statement that “we prohibit retaliation in the workplace and publicly
share our very clear policy.”
“We thoroughly investigated this employee’s
claim, as we do when any concerns are raised,” she added.
Google’s growing reputation for punishing
employees who are publicly critical of the company is a notable change for an
employer that once nourished an outspoken workplace culture. Google had long
welcomed wide-ranging dialogue on its internal, online message boards and
encouraged employees to debate executives’ decisions in companywide meetings
and other forums.
“Google has drawn enough of a line in the
sand of either you’re with us and you’re on board or you’re out,” Stapleton
said in a recent interview.
The Los Angeles Times earlier reported
Koren’s claim.
Koren, who is Jewish, opposed Nimbus after it
was announced in April 2021 because she was concerned that Google’s technology
could help Israeli forces surveil and harm Palestinians. The contract went into
effect in July 2021 and lasts for seven years.
Neither the company nor Israel has detailed
the capabilities Israel will receive, or how they will be used, but a Google
slide deck for training Nimbus users included software that Google claims can
recognize people, gauge emotional states from facial expressions, and track
objects in video footage. The Intercept earlier reported details of the slide
deck.
Koren and Gabriel Schubiner, another Jewish
employee who became a public opponent of Nimbus, created an group in 2020,
Jewish Diaspora in Tech, which now has 500 members but is not recognized by
Google. The group became a center for anti-Nimbus organizing.
Koren said she went on disability leave for depression,
anxiety, and burnout in July 2021. During her leave, anti-Nimbus organizing
intensified, with a public petition, another for Google employees and a
campaign supported by two outside, nonprofit groups.
When Google and other folks retaliate against workers, it’s about creating a culture of fear,
Two weeks before her disability leave was set
to end, Koren sat for a televised interview with
MSNBC to discuss the protests
against Nimbus.
She returned to work in November, she said,
and was told that she had three weeks to make a decision about moving to
Brazil.
She found a lawyer and filed a complaint with
Google’s human resources department, claiming retaliation. Google said it
would investigate, which delayed the move. She also filed a retaliation
complaint with the US National Labor Relations Board, which dismissed the case
for insufficient evidence. Koren said Google had not allowed the board to
speak with her manager, while the company said the planned move had been purely
a business decision.
In February, she went on another disability
leave, and never returned to work. During her leave, more than 700 of her
colleagues signed a petition saying that Google had unjustly retaliated against
Koren. Roughly 25,000 people signed a public version of the same petition.
What some workers say is a crackdown on
employee activism has continued to color life inside the company, according to
the remarks of the 15 Google employees, as well as interviews with seven
workers. They contend that the company unfairly enforces its content moderation
rules, creating a double standard: Speech supporting the Israeli government is
permitted, while speech supporting Palestinians is flagged and sometimes a
punishable offense.
Six Palestinians, who provided anonymized
remarks read aloud by colleagues, said they did not feel safe to express their
opinions at the company.
“Project Nimbus makes me feel like I am
making my living off my family’s oppression,” one of the workers said.
Some of the employees recalled being punished
or reprimanded for perceived antisemitism after some colleagues had said it was
antisemitic for them to proclaim, “Support Palestine.” One person said a
colleague had accused them of antisemitism for selfidentifying as a
“Palestinian-American”.
One employee who requested anonymity said in
an interview that he had been forced to meet with human resources after
coworkers repeatedly reported him for antisemitism over several months. He had
included an expression in his corporate profile — “From the river to the sea,
Palestine will be free” — and took it down when asked to.
He had also discussed on internal forums
findings about Israeli policies from the UN and Amnesty International; life in
Gaza, which borders Israel and Egypt and is home to 2 million Palestinians;
and his belief that Israel is an apartheid state.
He said that he had been given a formal
warning and that his performance evaluation had been reduced to “needs
improvement”. Though he had never received that lower rating before, he lost a
bonus of more than $10,000, and could be fired for another offense, he said. He
was told not to post anything that could offend coworkers, so he stopped
discussing politics altogether.
The employees who recorded the YouTube videos
and who spoke with The New York Times point to Koren’s experience as an
indication that they cannot openly discuss their views and keep their jobs.
Google did not directly address their complaints in its statement.
Still, Koren said she was encouraged by the
show of support.
“When Google and other folks retaliate against workers,
it’s about creating a culture of fear,” Koren said. “I think the opposite is
true in this case — more workers took a stand.”
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