A group of four former Google employees who say they were fired for organizing are filing unfair labor practice charges against the company
Welcome to your next installment of Metal Machine Music. James Farrell / SiliconANGLE : Fired workers accuse Google of unfair labor practices Allison Levitsky / Silicon Valley Business Journal : Fired Google engineers announce plans to file federal labor complaint against the company Rebekah Valentine / GamesIndustry.biz : Fired Google employees accuse company of union-busting Ahiza Garcia / CNN : Fired Google employees plan to file unfair labor practice charges Tweets: Irenes / @ireneista : Google's messaging has implied that the fired organizers leaked confidential information, without outright stating it. This piece flatly denies that not-quite-allegation. https://medium.com/... @laurenceb : Sophie says what you need to hear (and thanks @juliacarriew for printing it) When @NoPrideForGoog was just getting started, people asked about the company's reputation for being good to LGBTQ+ workers. But workers are the ones who made it that way. https://twitter.com/... @googlewalkout : Google fired us for organizing. Now we're fighting back. [THREAD] https://medium.com/... Roger McNamee / @moonalice : Context for management change? In any business where the key assets walk out the door every night, minimum requirement is to create an illusion of caring about employees. If the fired garner sympathy from remaining Googlers, Google is in big trouble. https://www.theverge.com/... @pinboard : Here's the letter from the four Google employees fired for organizing. They mention their NLRB complaint is a “first step”, which gives me hope that there will also be a more direct response on the part of their coworkers left behind https://medium.com/... Mar Hicks / @histoftech : Google workers are trying to put the brakes on some of the company's more evil products. So Google fired them. When whistleblowers are told to stfu you get huge problems that affect us all. Just ask the engineers at Boeing or the ad salespeople at Facebook https://medium.com/... Rebecca Rivers / @tri_becca90 : Google is using misleading and vague statements and relying on, employees, reporters, and everyone else to draw incorrect conclusions. I believe their wording to be very intentional for this very reason. https://twitter.com/... Veena Dubal / @veenadubal : Yessss ✊🏾✊🏾 🔥🔥 “Google fails to understand that workers are the ones who built the company and its most successful products. And that we can stop building them.” https://medium.com/... Evan Greer / @evan_greer : 1,000x this. Companies that treat their senior level LGBTQ workers “well” while supporting policies that are detrimental to marginalized LGBTQ people should not get to wave a rainbow flag and claim they're our allies https://twitter.com/... Mike Solana / @micsolana : google activists — the wealthiest, most coddled workers in history — appropriating the language of oppressed, midcentury coal miners has been the biggest LOL of 2019 https://twitter.com/... Julia Carrie Wong / @juliacarriew : Three of the four fired workers are LGBTQ, and had been involved in worker activism around queer and trans rights. “Google is a lovely place to work if you are transgender and don't care about what is going on in the world” https://www.theguardian.com/ ... Julia Carrie Wong / @juliacarriew : The four Google workers who were fired last week are filing charges alleging that Google violated federal labor law. “It's not about us, but intimidating everyone else. They want us afraid, they want us resigned, and they want us cynical.” https://www.theguardian.com/ ... Olivia Solon / @oliviasolon : “When we win, it furthers our cause, and when we don't win, it furthers our cause, too,” said Laurence Berland, who was a senior site reliability engineer at Google before he was fired. https://www.nbcnews.com/... Jacob Ward / @byjacobward : “It's clear that their draconian, pernicious, and unlawful conduct isn't about us. It's about trying to stop all workplace organizing,” write the four Googlers fired Thanksgiving week. https://medium.com/... John Ketchum / @ketchcast : “Google wants to send a message to everyone: if you dare to engage in protected labor organizing, you will be punished.” https://www.vox.com/... Johana Bhuiyan / @jmbooyah : The 4 activist Google employees who were fired — at least 2 of them say it was without warning — are filing unfair labor practice complaints against the company this week. https://medium.com/... Here's more about their termination from last week: https://www.latimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This filing opens what becomes a multi-year legal arc rather than a one-off dispute: within two days of the four organizers' charges, more Google employees filed a retaliation complaint with the NLRB in Chicago, and by mid-December another Googler was publicly contesting her termination over a modified browser plugin used to send labor-rights pop-ups. The NLRB later widened its case to add three more fired workers protesting Google's CBP contract, and the 2019 cohort's claims were ultimately folded into a broader reckoning over the company's documented anti-union campaign.
First-order effects
- Google now faces federal unfair labor practice charges from the four fired organizers, forcing it to defend its terminations before the NLRB while its stated rationale — leaked confidential information — is contested in public filings.
- The fired employees gain an official venue to pursue reinstatement or remedies, shifting their dispute from internal protest to a formal regulatory process.
Second-order effects
- The charges lower the barrier for other dismissed Googlers: subsequent waves of complainants, culminating in over 50 ex-employees filing over the Israel-related sit-in firings, treat the NLRB as the default recourse for retaliation claims.
- Each new complaint forces Google's legal and HR apparatus to relitigate the same organizing-era terminations, raising the cost of its fire-and-explain playbook.
Third-order effects
- The eventual outcome — a settlement under NDA with engineers who exposed the anti-union campaign but no reinstatement for the fired four — sets the template for how large tech employers resolve labor disputes privately while avoiding admissions, even as complaint volume keeps climbing.
- Sustained NLRB activity around activist firings points toward organized-labor law becoming the primary battleground between tech workers and management, displacing petitions and open letters as the enforcement mechanism.
The trend: Tech worker activism at Google is migrating from open letters and walkouts toward formal NLRB litigation, with settlements under NDA replacing reinstatement as the resolution path.