[lordlimecat]

Opposing unions in an illegal manner is not likely to impress the various oversight agencies, or any courts that get involved.

Once a company becomes big enough, claims that they're lying to persecute a handful of users become implausible because the potential liability for doing so vastly outweighs the minor benefits they might gain. And this isnt the 1920s, you can't just fire people for trying to unionize and realistically think that it will solve the problem or that no one will notice.

Ignore the names of the companies / individuals involved, their histories, etc-- just look at the incentives that each party has around lying vs telling the truth-- and it's not hard to accept that Google is more likely to be truthful about this than a terminated employee.

[leereeves]

To be clear, I'm not suggesting Google is lying.

I suspect they have evidence of exactly what they said, that the screenshots were obtained by people outside Google, but don't have evidence that the fired workers were responsible for that.

Given the other contents of the statement, I think if Google had evidence that a fired worker sent a screenshot outside the company, they would say so.