Nuked The specifics of the settlement remain under a non-disclosure agreement. Four of the engineers who were allegedly fired out of retaliation for their labor activism in 2019 will not be reinstated.
Four employees, Rebecca rivers, Laurence Berland, Paul Duke, and Sophie Waldman, filed labor charges against Google in 2019. They rallied against some of Google’s ethically questionable choices, including its work with the customs and Border protection. Berland reached a settlement with Google last year.
Kathryn Spiers was fired for not getting proper approval for the code she created. The pop-up would appear when employees viewed Google’s internal employee guidelines or visited the website of IRI consultants, an anti-union firm that Google hired.
Fighting for workers’ rights is hard, it hurts, but seeing the impact that we have helped make in the labor organizing movement is worth it.
In 2020, the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against Google, claiming the company illegally spied on Berland and Spiers before firing them. In January, the court ordered Google to hand over more internal documents that the company attempted to conceal by claiming attorney-client privilege.
Rivers:’it took over 2 years of living in a near-constant hell. But, it is finally over’.’seeing the impact that we have helped make in the labor organizing movement is worth it’.
Waldman, rivers, and Duke filed a separate lawsuit against Google last November. They said they were contractually obliged to follow the company’s famous’do n’t be evil’ policy. This lawsuit was dropped as part of the settlement.
I am confident that my client’s success here – effectively bringing Google to its knees – will encourage other employees to pick up the baton and continue the efforts to hold corporations accountable for their actions’.
