Google is being investigated for anti-union activity by National Labor Relations Board
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It sure did not take Google long to go from “Don’t Be Evil” to the embodiment of late-stage capitalism. The company is under investigation the second time this year by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for activities which appear to be designed to discourage employee organization activities.
On this occasion, the NLRB has launched a Google anti-union investigation following a claim by four employees who say they were fired for protected labour organizing.
In November Google had fired the 4 employees for what they said was violations of its data-security policies but what the employees said were in retaliation for protesting and organizing over the two years over issues including the company’s work with the military, a censored search service in China and its handling of executives accused of sexual harassment.
Google stands accused of violated federal labour for discouraging employees from engaging in union activity.
In a statement regarding the Google anti-union investigation, the company denied this, saying:
“We dismissed four individuals who were engaged in intentional and often repeated violations of our longstanding data security policies, including systematically accessing and disseminating other employees’ materials and work. No one has been dismissed for raising concerns or debating the company’s activities.”
The NLRB had earlier forced Google to remind employees they can freely discuss workplace issues and that they do not have to “avoid controversies that are disruptive to the workplace” after the company sent a memo asking workers to do the same when using internal messaging boards.
In a recent petition, Google employees demanded that “Google publicly commit not to support CBP, ICE, or ORR with any infrastructure, funding, or engineering resources, directly or indirectly, until they stop engaging in human rights abuses.”
Google stands accused of a retaliation culture and appears to have an ever worsening relationship with its employees, as employee ideals which Google initially cultivated increasingly come between its efforts to make a profit by for example working with China or the US military and government.
