Google: King’s Cross staff protest over tech giant’s redundancies

Hundreds of Google employees gathered outside the company’s London offices in protest over the tech giant’s plans to axe thousands of jobs globally, and for rolling out an “appalling and potentially unlawful” redundancy process.

Google announced in January that it intends to remove approximately 12,000 jobs. The cuts followed a period of “dramatic growth”,wrote chief executive Sundar Pichai in an email to staff.

“To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today,” he continued.

While a separate email was sent to employees in the US to be affected, Mr Pinchai said the process will take longer in other countries “due to local laws and practices”.

Among those to be hit will be staff in the UK, with the union Unite believing there to be hundreds of employees at risk.

At the protest today (April 4), staff and Unite representatives gathered in King’s Boulevard, out the front of Google’s King’s Cross offices, in protest at the planned cuts and the alleged treatment of staff during the process.

“I’m so tired” and “Enough is enough” were but two of the signs held by employees in attendance, while anonymised messages from staff members were read out over a loudspeaker detailing the frustration felt by some towards the company.

Matt Whaley, regional officer for Unite, told LondonWorld about 500 employees are at risk of being let go in the UK.

He said: “Google had a strapline years ago as a business, ‘Don’t be evil’, and unfortunately, they are not behaving equitably towards their staff.

“They didn’t really consult meaningfully, in our view, during the consultation process. A lot of questions remained unanswered. We told the management this could impact on grievances we’d raised, before we got to the individual stage, and now we’re in the individual consultation stage, there are still problems around how people have been selected, and the decisions leading up to that, and the company are refusing to allow trade union representatives to accompany people to these meetings, and they are refusing to hear any grievances connected to the redundancy programme.”

Mr Whaley added the alleged actions are “not compatible” with Google’s stated ethos, and that he has had employees crying to him over the phone over the experience.

“It’s really sad that we’re in this situation.”

In terms of demands, Mr Whaley said Unite wants union representatives to be allowed in negotiations with employees, and for Google to communicate with him over the issues.

“The standard one-line response we’re getting at the moment is ‘you’re not recognised, Unite, so we ain’t talking to you’, and that’s not acceptable.”

A Google spokesperson said: “As we said on January 20, we’ve made the difficult decision to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 roles globally. We know this is a very challenging time for our employees.

“In the UK, we have been constructively engaging and listening to our employees through numerous meetings, and are working hard to bring them clarity and share updates as soon as we can in adherence with all UK processes and legal requirements.”