Members of the Alphabet Workers Union submitted the petition to Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s office after around 100 employees gathered outside the tech giant’s campus to support the demand. Employees are demanding guaranteed severance packages, buyout options before forced layoffs and the choice to take severance as paid leave.
Many employees participating in the protest wore black T-shirts, while some held a long white banner carrying the names of workers who signed the petition. The union said this was the biggest employee-led campaign at Google focused on job security.
Google software engineer and union president Parul Koul handed over the petition outside Google’s California office. She said that Google is currently doing extremely well and is not facing any financial crisis and pointed out that Google’s parent company Alphabet is valued at around $4 trillion, which has increased nearly four times in the last six years.
“These layoffs and cuts are not difficult decisions, but simply profit being put over the people that make this company run,” she told The Guardian.
Koul said the employees did not receive much response from the company. She said they were mostly met with closed doors and no direct communication. “Workers were greeted with closed doors and no response for the most part. They left the petition with a staff member in Pichai’s office, who committed to delivering it to the CEO,” she said.
During a press conference outside Google’s office on Thursday, employees also criticized the company’s large-scale layoffs in 2023 which cut 12,000 jobs.
ALSO READ | ‘This has to stop’: Former tech CEO lashes out at AI-led tech layoffs
Protesters raised slogans such as ‘shame’ and accused the company of putting profits ahead of workers. “Google, Google you can’t hide, we can see your greedy side,” the workers chanted.
The petition comes at a time when several major technology companies are reducing their workforce while increasing spending on AI.
Last month, Google quietly laid off employees in its cloud division. The job cuts affected multiple teams, including Google’s Threat Intelligence Group, a top cybersecurity unit that tracks online threats and publishes research on hackers.
