Google confirmed it has fired 20 additional workers that it says were involved in protests last week in NYC and Sunnyvale, CA, denouncing the tech giant’s cloud computing deal with the Israeli government, bringing the total number of workers fired to 50 (per CNN).

The group organizing the demonstrations, No Tech for Apartheid, told The Washington Post that Google had fired an additional 20 workers, on top of the 30 workers terminated last week, claiming that some of the workers fired were “non-participating bystanders” during last Tuesday’s sit-in protests at Google’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, and not actively involved in the workplace activism. The statement decried the mass firings as “an aggressive and desperate act of retaliation” by the tech giant. Jane Chung, a spokesperson for No Tech for Apartheid, charged Google with trying to quash dissent within the company. The group has led demonstrations over Google and Amazon’s contracts with the Israeli government since 2021.

Google did not give specific numbers of how many were fired, it accused them of being involved in “disruptive activity,” with a spokesperson telling The Hill: “To reiterate, every single one of those whose employment was terminated was personally and definitively involved in disruptive activity inside our buildings. We carefully confirmed and reconfirmed this .. Google values its profits, and its $1.2 billion contract with the Israel government and military more than people.”  Google said it took longer to learn about others participating in the protests because masks partially concealed their identities and they were not wearing badges.

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