Google Won’t Honor Medical Leave During its Layoffs, Outraging Employees
upstart writes:
Ex-Googler says she was laid off from her hospital bed shortly after giving birth:
Would you believe that Google's mass firings from January are still going on? Google's reported mishandling of its biggest round of layoffs ever has employees up in arms, and they're doing everything from walking out on the job to sending angry letters to management.
First up, European Googlers are just now being laid off due to the January announcement. Reuters reports that more than 200 workers were laid off from the Zurich, Switzerland, branch of the company this week. The employees at that office walked out for a second time in protest of the move and even offered to take pay cuts or reduce working hours to stave off the job cuts. Google's layoffs seem driven by a desire to placate the stock market, though, so it's no surprise that these offers fell on deaf ears.
[...] Making Google honor its previous leave agreements isn't just about employees getting paid when they have medical or family issues; it's also about having continual medical care when they need it most. As part of Google's (seemingly discarded) plan to offer employees every perk imaginable, the company has on-site medical facilities that many employees make use of.
While employees' severance packages might come with a few more months of health insurance, being fired means instantly losing access to Google's facilities. If that's where a laid-off Googler's primary care doctor works, that person is out of luck, and some employees told CNBC they lost access to their doctors the second the layoff email arrived. Employees on leave also have a lot to deal with. One former Googler, Kate Howells, said she was let go by Google from her hospital bed shortly after giving birth. She worked at the company for nine years.
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