Google Fired an Engineer Who Wrote Code Telling Googlers They Had a Right to Organize

Google Fired an Engineer Who Wrote Code Telling Googlers They Had a Right to Organize

4 years ago
Anonymous $9ruWwTnhZq

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgexe8/google-fired-an-engineer-who-wrote-code-telling-googlers-they-had-a-right-to-organize

When news broke in November that Google had hired an anti-union consulting firm to handle mounting labor unrest at the company, a 21-year-old security engineer named Kathryn Spiers decided to take action. As part of her job, Spiers creates pop-up notifications informing workers about policy changes at the company. After she learned that Google had hired the anti-union firm, Spiers wrote a few lines of code that created a pop-up message asserting Google employees’ labor rights whenever her co-workers visited the consulting firm’s website or Google’s community guidelines. The message reads: "Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities." The pop-up would have been visible to anyone at Google.

On Friday, Google fired Spiers—after two weeks of suspension and three separate interviews, she said.