MOUNTAIN VIEW, United States: A group of workers at Google have filed a complaint with a US labor board saying the tech giant had unlawfully sacked them for protesting its cloud contract with the government of Israel.
According to No Tech For Apartheid, a group affiliated with some of the workers, the complaint was filed on Monday with the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
It said that the group in the complaint alleged that by firing the workers, Google interfered with their rights under US labor law.
Google this month said it had sacked 28 employees who disrupted work at some offices of the company while protesting Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion agreement jointly awarded to Google and Amazon.com to supply cloud services to the Israeli government.
The workers say the project supports Israel’s manufacturing of military tools. Google has said the Nimbus contract is not aimed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to arms or intelligence services.
Zelda Montes, a former Google employee who was arrested during a protest of Project Nimbus, in a statement said that Google fired employees to suppress its workforce that dissent would not be tolerated.
The workers in their complaint are seeking to be recalled to their jobs with back pay.
The NLRB general counsel, which acts as a prosecutor, reviews the complaints and tries to settle claims if they fall on merit.
If that could not happen, the general counsel can pursue the matter before administrative judges and a five-member board appointed by the US president.
