[yulaow]

In her group email she also asked other employees to stop working in any other related project.

I mean, I don't see how google could NOT terminate her after such an event. I am in a nation with extremly strong worker protection law but that action alone would be enough to fire you on the spot.

[tinalumfoil]

Reading the comments here I feel like HN lives in a completely parallel universe. The number of employees who have the ability to threaten to quit and not immediately get fired are very very few. Even at the executive level you can't just make ultimatums for your employment and expect that they won't consider just firing you. Even if you're the representative of a union speaking on behalf of thousands of employees you need make sure you have enough leverage before making demands like that.

This not some crazy conspiracy that she got fired. It would be noteworthy if someone who did what she did didn't get fired.

[beisner]

The reality is that the research organizations at big tech companies have always been a very different kind of labor relationship than typical rank-and-file business units. Many of the senior or otherwise high-profile researchers at FAANG companies would otherwise be professors or academics, in positions where there is essentially unbridled academic freedom and no expectation of separating personal convictions and principles from the academic environment.

Google lured many of these researchers away from academic roles, with the tacit promise that they would be able to continue their research - and at times political - endeavors relatively unencumbered. Google has built a research empire on this promise, which has been responsible in part for their continued dominance in various markets.

My point here is that these researchers have a lot of leverage. Advocating for action within an organization, counter to the current immediate goals of management, is only taboo (and thus “fireable”) in most companies because workers have almost no leverage, generally speaking. Not because it’s some inherently “bad” thing. If Google becomes seen as a place that fires researchers for advocating for their beliefs, especially in a capacity that they’ve been explicitly hired to do, then I think a lot of researchers would - and rightly should - reconsider whether such an environment is consistent with their values as academics and, often times, activists. Google’s research group is enormously valuable to the company, and there’s only so much reputational damage of this nature the organization can sustain before academics decide to take their talents elsewhere.

[romanoderoma]

> with extremly strong worker protection law

Serious question: what makes them strong if employers can't organize a simple strike?

[yulaow]

You can organize a strike BUT this is absolutely not the way you do it.

You have to follow strict procedures, work with your union and go into one or more formal negotiating tables with all the representatives of all the interested parts before even thinking about giving an ultimatum like that. And for sure you cannot communicate in that way using directly your work email

[romanoderoma]

But can you or can't you be fired for that?

Because in my country you can't be fired for using the work email for that.

Communicating with other workers using their work email is absolutely allowed, courts ruled about it several times [1].

I usually receive trade unions (there are several of them) communications on my work email from the unions' work email, because they have been authorized by the company to send them.

In this case she wrote directly to workers using work email, but having no union or labor protection laws it doesn't make any difference whether she could or couldn't, she could be fired anyway without having to provide any reason.

In countries where there are strong laws protecting workers she would have written to the union members and they would have done the same thing: write directly to the workers.

Of course she did it at Google so it is different, but here the strict procedures to call a strike are only necessary if a public service that requires continuity risk to be interrupted, otherwise unions are only required to alert the company that the strike is going to happen, but have no requirement whatsoever on how to organise it.

Which sound logical to me,strong protection means IMO freedom to collectively counter the actions of the company, if that's not allowed the protection is not strong.

[1] Court of Catania, Labor Section, February 2, 2009 "The RSU employee can send trade union communications by e-mail to the employees of the company during their working hours and to their company e-mail address using his personal e-mail address"

[thu2111]

In many countries you do need a vote for a strike to be organised. You can't just spam people with a request to stop working. Strikes are a powerful tactic that have evolved a lot of formality around them to try and ensure the outcomes aren't totally destructive. Italy is a rather unusual exception to this. Perhaps it's a contributing factor to the long stagnation of the Italian economy.

[romanoderoma]

> Perhaps it's a contributing factor to the long stagnation of the Italian economy

Perhaps.

But doesn't explain stagnation in Japanese economy where there are no Italian unions.

Or why France did much better despite having even stronger work protections laws than Italy and wilder strikes (the gilet jaunes for example) or those happened last year against the pension reform where the workers of public transportation went on strike - for weeks - without even announcing it.

Even countries like Germany, Singapore, Switzerland and Finland are doing worse than Pakistan in the GDP growth race.

My point was than if there are stronger work protection laws somewhere else and the laws of your country are weaker, they are not very strong, they are moderately strong.

[thu2111]

Re: last point. Fair enough. That point is sound.

Japan seems to have evolved a work culture very similar to strongly unionised societies but without unions. Japanese salaryman culture is famously a culture of employment for life with unusually strong loyalty between employee and employer, hence weird things like "banishment rooms" that you don't find elsewhere. If it's the end results that matter and not the means, Japan might not be a good counter example.

I think French strike law sounds tighter than Italian strike law? The French are famous for striking but strikes must still be a collective decision and related to a specific set of issues, whereas Italian strike law really does sound incredibly broad and vague.

With respect to Pakistan, that's doesn't mean anything, poor countries always have very high GDP growth. It's easy to grow something small and backwards by a lot because you can get a lot of relative growth just by copying what other countries do, and less absolute improvement is needed to get a percentage point of growth to begin with. You can only compare GDP growth rates between countries of a similar level of wealth.

[lostjohnny]

> but that action alone would be enough to fire you on the spot.

They are not as strong as you think then.

In countries where there are strong work protections law striking is a right, you don't get paid for the time you don't show up at work but you can obviously convince an entire department or an entire company workforce to go on strike, without consequences.

Without it the protection is not strong, it means an entire company against the individual worker, which is obviously unfair (regardless of what you think about work protections law, Google against a single human being it's an unfair battle, that's why "strong protection" means that the worker deson't have to fight alone and can call other workers to join the fight).

[yulaow]

As I said in another sibling post, you cannot strike that way. You have to follow procedures to organize a legit strike.

If I wrote an email like that not only my union would not protect me, they would most probably tell me the employer took the right decision because I put at risk other employees positions (if they followed my reccomandations to stop working just because I said it)