Google has fired five employees within one month for trying to organize labor

When news broke in November that Google had hired an anti-union consulting firm to handle mounting labor unrest at the company, a 21-year-old security engineer named Kathryn Spiers decided to take action. As part of her job, Spiers creates pop-up notifications informing workers about policy changes at the company. After she learned that Google had hired the anti-union firm, Spiers wrote a few lines of code that created a pop-up message asserting Google employees’ labor rights whenever her co-workers visited the consulting firm’s website or Google’s community guidelines. The message reads: "Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities." The pop-up would have been visible to anyone at Google.

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On Friday, Google fired Spiers—after two weeks of suspension and three separate interviews, she said.

“Following the hiring of the union busting firm, I wrote the code because I thought all Googlers could benefit from knowing their rights,” Spiers told Motherboard. “Google said they were firing me because I violated security policy as well as standard of conduct. I’ve read those policies, and I don’t think I did. I feel this is pretty clearly retaliation for organizing work.”

Before implementing the code, Spiers said she followed the standard three-pronged process for code changes at Google, which involves approval from three people. (In this instance, Spiers said she was one of the three people who had the authority to grant herself approval.)

Spiers is the fifth Google employee involved in labor activism at the company who has been fired for violating security policies within the past month. Three of the five recent firings have been transgender women, who have taken an active role in organizing to end Google’s relationship with immigration enforcement agencies, among other issues. “We make up a disproportionate number of the organizers at Google, but we’re also more vulnerable as members of the trans community,” Spiers said. “It’s easier to retaliate against us.”

Maddog wrote:So an employee took it upon themselves to write some new code, that wasn't authorized and got fired.

What a shock.

Ben Reilly wrote:

Maddog wrote:So an employee took it upon themselves to write some new code, that wasn't authorized and got fired.

What a shock.

Knew you'd say that

Ben Reilly wrote:The lesson is, don't fuck with the man, right?