Google 'Arguably Violated' Labor Law When it Fired Employees Involved in Unionizing, Says NLRB Chief
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:
Google 'arguably violated' labor law when it fired employees involved in unionizing, says NLRB chief:
Google "arguably violated" US labor laws when it fired three employees involved in unionizing activity, the acting head of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has said.
[...] Google suffered backlash after firing five activist workers in the space of a month towards the end of 2019. Laurence Berland, Paul Duke, Rebecca Rivers, and Sophie Waldman became known as the "Thanksgiving Four" after the company sacked them around the holiday season, alleging they had leaked company information in violation of its policies, an allegation all of them deny.
The four were subsequently joined by Kathryn Spiers, who had created an internal pop-up notification for employees telling them they had a right to "participate in protected concerted activities" before being fired in December 2019.
The ex-Googlers subsequently filed complaints via the NLRB, alleging that Google terminated their contracts in an attempt to crush unionization efforts.
In 2020, under the Trump administration, then NLRB leader Peter Robb accused Google of illegally firing Berland and Spiers, but rejected the other three's claims.
In a new letter seen by Bloomberg, however, the agency's new acting chief Ohr said that Google had "arguably violated" federal labor laws by "unlawfully discharging".
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.