Google workers arrested after nine-hour protest in cloud CEO’s office

[Pelican Press 0]

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workers arrested after nine-hour protest in cloud CEO’s office

Nine

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workers were arrested on trespassing charges Tuesday night after staging a sit-in at the company’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, including a protest in

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Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s office.

The arrests, which were livestreamed on

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by participants, follow rallies outside

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offices in New York, Sunnyvale and Seattle, which attracted hundreds of attendees, according to workers involved. The protests, led by the “No Tech for Apartheid” organization, focused on Project Nimbus —

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and

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’s ****** $1.2 billion contract to provide the ******** government and military with cloud computing services, including artificial intelligence tools, data centers and other cloud infrastructure.

Protesters in Sunnyvale sat in Kurian’s office for more than nine hours until their arrests, writing demands on Kurian’s whiteboard and wearing shirts that read “Googler against genocide.” In New York, protesters sat in a three-floor common space. Five workers from Sunnyvale and four from New York were arrested.

“On a personal level, I am opposed to

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taking any military contracts — no matter which government they’re with or what exactly the contract is about,” Cheyne Anderson, a

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Cloud software engineer based in Washington, told CNBC. “And I hold that opinion because

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is an international company and no matter which military it’s with, there are always going to be people on the receiving end… represented in

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’s employee base and also our user base.” Anderson had flown to Sunnyvale for the protest in Kurian’s office and was one of the workers arrested Tuesday.

“

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Cloud supports numerous governments around the world in countries where we operate, including the ******** government, with our generally available cloud computing services,” a

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spokesperson told CNBC, adding, “This work is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.”

The demonstrations show

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’s increased pressure from workers who oppose military use of its AI and cloud technology. Last month,

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Cloud engineer Eddie Hatfield interrupted a keynote speech from the managing director of

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’s ******* business stating, “I refuse to build technology that powers genocide.” Hatfield was subsequently fired. That same week, an internal

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employee message board was shut down after staffers posted comments about the company’s ******** military contracts. A spokesperson at the time described the posts as “divisive content that is disruptive to our workplace.”

On Oct. 7, ****** carried out deadly attacks on *******, ******** 1,200 and taking more than 240 hostages.  The following day, ******* declared war and began implementing a siege of Gaza, cutting off access to power, food, water and fuel. At least 33,899 people have been ******* in the Gaza Strip since that date, the enclave’s Health Ministry 

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 in a statement on Telegram. In January at the U.N.’s top court, ******* 

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 brought by South *******.

The ******** Ministry of Defense

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to expand its access to

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Cloud services.

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Photos is one

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to conduct surveillance in Gaza, according to The New York Times.

“I think what happened yesterday is evidence that

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’s attempts to suppress all of the voices of opposition to this contract are not only not working but actually having the opposite effect,” Ariel Koren, a former

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employee who resigned in 2022 after leading efforts to oppose the Project Nimbus contract, told CNBC. “It’s really just creating more agitation, more anger and more commitment.”

The New York sit-in started at noon ET and ended around 9:30 p.m. ET. Security asked workers to remove their banner, which spanned two floors, about an hour into the protest, according to Hasan Ibraheem, a

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software engineer based in New York City and one of the arrested workers.

“I realized, ‘Oh, the place that I work at is very complicit and aiding in this genocide — I have a responsibility to act against it,”” Hasan Ibraheem, a

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software engineer based in New York City, told CNBC. Ibraheem added, “The fact that I am receiving money from

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and ******* is paying

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— I am receiving part of that money, and that weighed very heavily on me.”

The New York workers were released from the police station after about four hours.

The nine arrested workers in New York and Sunnyvale told CNBC that, during the protest, they were locked out of their work accounts and offices, placed on administrative leave, and told to wait to return to work until being contacted by HR.

The workers were also protesting their labor conditions — namely “that the company stop the harassment, intimidation, bullying, silencing, and censorship of ************, *****, ******* Googlers — and that the company address the health and safety crisis workers, especially those in

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Cloud, are facing due to the potential impacts of their work,” according to a release by the campaign.

“A small number of employee protesters entered and disrupted a couple of our locations,” a

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spokesperson told CNBC. “Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and we will investigate and take action. These employees were put on administrative leave and their access to our systems was cut. After refusing multiple requests to leave the premises, law enforcement was engaged to remove them to ensure office safety.”

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Cloud computing,Alphabet Class C,Alphabet Inc,Technology,Breaking News: Technology,Artificial intelligence,Generative AI,Labor economy,Personnel,New York,New York City,business news
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#workers #arrested #ninehour #protest #cloud #CEOs #office

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