More than 500 Google workers rallied behind a female colleague who was allegedly fired for her activism within the company, the latest outbreak between the tech giant and employees who have spoken out against her business practices and workplace conditions.

Workers signed a petition accusing Google’s leadership of “unfair retaliation” against Ariel Koren, director of product marketing at Google for Education, for his criticism of Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract between Google and Amazon Web Services with the Israeli military. and the government.

“Unfortunately, Ariel’s case fits with Google’s dangerous record of worker retaliation that has made headlines in the past few years – specifically against those who speak out against contracts that enable state violence against marginalized people,” the petition read.

Google said it investigated the incident and found no evidence of retaliation.

Mountain View, California, has escaped several high-profile retaliation lawsuits, with some workers becoming more Worries about him and criticizes him publicly company’s policyand its handling of alleged sexual misconduct and other issues. include Internal criticism of the company’s work with immigration authorities And the allegations of Timnit Gebru, which she said were so Launched in 2020 to challenge the company recruitment approach Underrepresented minorities And trying to publish research on bias in artificial intelligence.

Corinne believes she has faced more scrutiny since last spring. In May, Google called on Google to express its solidarity with the Palestinians in the wake of Israel’s attack on Gaza that killed more than 250 people. In October, she led efforts to draft a letter between Google and Amazon employees that criticized the Nimbus project, multi-year plan To open data centers in Israel and provide the infrastructure for a full range of cloud services for the government and the military. The letter stated that the program would facilitate monitoring of Palestinians and the expansion of Israeli settlements. Considered illegal under international law. The letter that collected hundreds of signatures of employees, Google urged to cut ties with the Israeli army. Corinne was one of two Googlers who spoke to the media publicly about this payment.

Corinne has worked at Google for about six years and led the marketing efforts for Google for Education, the company’s arm that creates technology tools for classrooms and teachers in Latin America. She said she had been staying in Mexico City for two years before being approved to work in San Francisco, where her partner lives, at the start of the pandemic.

Corinne said that in early November, she went on a video call to find out what she expected to be a routine weekly check-in with her manager. Instead, she said, her boss gave her an ultimatum: move to Brazil or lose her position.

Corinne said the manager told her at the meeting that the team’s business in Brazil was growing, her role would be moving to Sao Paulo, and she had 17 working days to commit to the move.

“It was so weird. The whole thing was just so wild,” she said in an interview.

Corinne said that although there were tentative plans to return to Mexico City after the pandemic, the leadership of her team had not previously raised the idea of ​​a move to Brazil.

Corinne filed a complaint with Google’s human resources department on November 22, which was reviewed by The Times, arguing that the rationale for the position transfer was “clearly designed” to remove her from the team, as there were no in-person events planned in São Paulo and the work her team is doing is far to to a big limit. In the complaint, she accused the company of retaliating against her for her protest activism against Project Nimbus and for reporting a member of her team to Human Resources for alleged harassment and discrimination in March 2021. Corinne said in the complaint that she had just returned from a disability. Vacation, teleworking was a reasonable accommodation for her mental health condition. With the help of a fledgling Google trade union, She also filed a complaint about unfair labor practices with the National Labor Relations Board.

Google denies Corinne’s allegations of revenge.

“We have thoroughly investigated this employee’s allegations and found that there was no retaliation,” Google spokeswoman Shannon Newberry said in a statement.

Newbery declined to comment further on the case and did not respond to a series of email questions about details of the November meeting between Corinne and her manager, the transfer decision and Corinne’s claim that it was intended to fire her from the team.

Corinne alleges in her complaint that within days of the November meeting, the company notified some of her colleagues that she would not have a position on the team even though she had not yet accepted or declined a move to Brazil. According to the complaint, when I asked why this information was being shared, her manager said, “Do you mean that you are actually going to consider moving to Sao Paulo?”

“This is an additional indication to me that ‘choosing’ moving to São Paulo is absolutely not an option,” Corin wrote in the complaint.

The director of Corinne did not respond to a request for comment. Corinne’s division chief and global director of marketing for Google for Education also did not respond to a request for comment.

Newberry declined to comment on Corinne’s future status at the company and whether Corinne would move. As of publication, Corinne still works for Google and lives in San Francisco.

NLRB spokeswoman Kayla Bladeau said the San Francisco Bureau of Labor is investigating Corinne’s complaint.

US Representative Anna J. Eshow (Democratic-Atherton), who represents Silicon Valley, has written a letter expressing support for Corinne. Although private companies can choose the contracts they enter into based on business goals, “employees have the right to express their objections to the employer’s work, without facing the risk of retaliation,” Ishou wrote in a December 14 letter to the CEO of Google. . Sundar Pichai.

Corinne’s support highlights the ongoing tension between Google’s increasingly vocal workforce and its senior management over how to use the company’s technology. It also fuels the view among a growing group of Googlers that the company’s once transparent culture is giving way to a tightly governed environment that penalizes worker activity.

Google employees have protested military contracts in recent years, challenging Google’s work with US Customs and Border Protection and its role in a defense program to build artificial intelligence tools used to improve drone strikes. The results of this activity did not appear to affect Google, which continued to collect lucrative defense contracts, and employees who challenged the company They say they still have problems. Workers claimed being terminated, lower his rank, Put in unwanted projects or push it out.

Google defends its practices and says its policies prevent retaliation.

“Everyone should be treated with respect at Google. We prohibit retaliation in the workplace and publicly share our very clear policy,” Newberry, a Google spokesperson, said in the emailed statement.

Employees face an internal dilemma in addressing social and political issues Alphabet Trade Union formed In early 2021, it was a watershed moment among the big tech companies that had long been fired from organizing employee workers with high salaries and perks. But the union was reluctant to lead campaigns dealing with controversial contracts, and focused its official efforts on them win protection for cTrainees and trainees.

The union’s executive board declined to comment on the Nimbus and Koren Project issue. Union members supported Corinne’s activism, and Corinne, the member, said the union was crucial to her current situation. “I don’t think that much support was possible a few years ago before the union,” Corinne said. “There is a greater awareness.”

Gabriel Schopener, a Google software engineer, told The Times that the company’s strict limits on inside information sharing and selective enforcement of those rules are efforts to suppress dissent.

Schopener said that speaking out about Project Nimbus was risky because criticism of Israel is often wrongly confused with anti-Semitism. Schopener and Corinne are Jewish, and they say it makes it easier for them to dismiss such claims than their Palestinian colleagues, who are also critical of Project Nimbus.

Parul Cole, a Google software engineer and union member, said Corinne has been “very open and honest within the company,” even after previous incidents of the alleged revenge had a “scary effect”.

Tina Wang, Google’s director of programs and a member of the union that helped draft the petition, said the CEOs it was sent to have not responded to her calls to rescind Koren’s transfer order and “end this larger pattern of retaliation.”