Roughly 100 Google workers rallied outside their Mountain View headquarters Thursday, demanding the company guarantee their jobs and severance — the same company that offers no such floor to conservative Americans it systematically silences.
The Alphabet Workers Union delivered a petition with more than 4,500 signatures to CEO Sundar Pichai, calling for guaranteed severance, buyouts before mandatory layoffs, and an end to forced-distribution performance quotas. The irony writes itself: a workforce that builds the infrastructure of censorship wants a safety net for itself while dismantling the safety net of free speech for everyone else.
Union president and Google engineer Parul Koul framed the rally as a fight against profit-over-people. "These layoffs and cuts are not difficult decisions, but simply profit being put over the people that make this company run," Koul said, pointing to Google's $4 trillion valuation — quadrupled over six years. Workers chanted "Google, Google you can't hide, we can see your greedy side" and shouted "shame" at references to the company's 2023 mass layoffs of roughly 12,000 employees.
The union's four demands are specific: guaranteed severance no lower than January 2023 packages, voluntary exit offers before involuntary cuts, an end to GRAD forced-distribution performance ratings, and extended paid leave for visa workers to find new sponsors before their immigration status lapses. The campaign has been building for 18 months, growing from roughly 400 signatures in January 2025 to a Valentine's Day action across 10 offices.
Workers were "greeted with closed doors and no response for the most part," Koul said. They left the petition with a staff member in Pichai's office. Google did not respond to requests for comment.
The backdrop is an industry-wide contraction driven by AI investment. Google Cloud quietly laid off employees roughly two months ago, according to Business Insider as cited by The Guardian, and last summer the company eliminated more than a third of its managers overseeing small teams, per CNBC. Alphabet CFO Anat Ashkenazi called AI a "key investment area" on the latest earnings call. Oracle has shed roughly 21,000 employees over the past year and suggested in its annual report that AI adoption "may continue to result in reductions to our workforce." Block cut nearly half its staff. Dozens of Meta employees are suing the company, alleging AI tools targeted workers who requested protected or disability leave before roughly 8,000 layoffs. Meta disputes the claims.
TNW reported that Google previously built a surveillance tool to monitor unionizing staff — the same company that surveils and deplatforms users for political dissent.
Google has extended voluntary exit packages to more than 70,000 staff across several divisions since the campaign began, a move the union counts as partial vindication.
The same workers who demand a floor under their careers build the systems that pull the floor out from under Americans who dare to dissent. Google's closed doors to its own mirror the closed doors it slams on deplatformed users. When the people who build the censorship machine come asking for mercy, remember who they denied it to first.
