Google Employee Sues For $3.8 Billion Over Confidentiality Policies (theverge.com) 102
An anonymous reader writes: A Google product manager has filed a lawsuit against the company for its confidentiality policies on the grounds they violate California labor laws. California labor laws give employees the right to discuss workplace issues with law enforcement, regulators, the media, and other employees. Google is accused of firing the employee for exercising his rights, then smearing his reputation in an internal email sent to the rest of the company. These policies are put in place to allegedly prevent the leaking of potentially damaging information to regulators or law enforcement. They in turn prohibit employees from speaking out about illegal activity within the company, even to its own lawyers, and encourage them to report other employees suspected of leaking information. The Verge has obtained a copy of the complaint, linked below in full. "Google's motto is 'don't be evil.' Google's illegal confidentiality agreements and policies fail this test," the lawsuit reads. One policy allegedly even prevents employees from writing a novel about working for a large Silicon Valley corporation -- like, for instance, Dave Eggers' dystopian novel, The Circle -- without first getting final draft approval from Google. The Information confirmed that this lawsuit was filed by the same individual, known in the suit only as "John Doe," who filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board earlier this year over many of the same confidentiality policies.
Re:Seeking an insane amount of money. (Score:5, Funny)
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$640,000,000,000 ought to be enough for everybody!
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I think you meant $640,000
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The number is correct... I had to take into account inflation, ad-ware fees, ransom overhead, and larger software updates! ;)
Re:Seeking an insane amount of money. (Score:4, Insightful)
If he had sued for his actual damages (if there were, in fact, any) of more like $38,000, The Information, The Verge, and The /. wouldn't have run the story. He probably figured that the more plublicity, the more money he is likely to get and/or the more likely Google is to alter their policies. Doesn't seem so stupid to me.
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At some level, you have to ask if "damages" are the only value of a lawsuit. If there's illegal behavior like this at a massive scale, the words "too big to fail" come to mind. There has to be a fine, even if that fine doesn't go to the plaintiff. Half of their quarterly profit would be nice, except the accountants would Hollywood the shit out of that.
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At some level, you have to ask if "damages" are the only value of a lawsuit. If there's illegal behavior like this at a massive scale, the words "too big to fail" come to mind. There has to be a fine, even if that fine doesn't go to the plaintiff. Half of their quarterly profit would be nice, except the accountants would Hollywood the shit out of that.
This nails the issue precisely.
You hear a lot of conservative rhetoric about government regulations and enforcers to the effect of "we don't need no stinkin' regulations or regulators, private lawsuits are perfectly capable of controlling corporate behavior". Well, this what private lawsuits to provide a check on corporate behavior looks like. Another private lawsuit option is of course a class action lawsuit, but strangely conservatives have been working hard to make those very difficult to file. Almost as
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It's already difficult to file. By reducing the amount of damages, it becomes less worthwhile to go to the expense and trouble.
"Good faith" is a slippery concept. It's apparently possible for an organization required to do a good-faith effort to find recipients of money owed to miss, say, the University of Minnesota. Apparently a good-faith effort to find something doesn't include using a search engine or telephone book or common sense. I no longer believe in good-faith mistakes that favor the compan
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Sure. How do you tell the difference between people attempting to follow the law and people saying they attempted to follow the law? I understand what good faith means. I just don't believe in it as an excuse, because it's so often and easily abused.
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This is why some EU legislation for abusive behaviour in companies sets fines at 10-15% of annual TURNOVER.
This idea being that fines can be inflicted which make the organism seriously flinch.
What's 10-15% of Google's turnover in XYZ country?
Re:Seeking an insane amount of money. (Score:4, Funny)
No, this is called Punitive Damages [youtube.com]
Re:Seeking an insane amount of money. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Seeking an insane amount of money. (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like he wants to get everyone the Christmas bonus Google decided to deny them this year.
Ho-Ho-Ho!
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And the lawyers will get half of that, which is $1.9 billion, and the sole reason for this lawsuit.
I'm not sure I understand how it is illegal for a company to retain valuable information.
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Notice that $14,600/employee * 61000 employees ~= $890m, which is a far cry short of $3.8b.
Reading the article, the claim is for $200 per pay period per employee per claim. There are 12 claims and if we assume biweekly paychecks, 26 pay periods. $200 * 12 * 26 = $62,400 per employee. $62,400/employee * 61000 employees ~= $3.8b, which suggests this math is correct. It's certainly possible
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"Actually, I believe the $14,600 number is incorrect and that he's actually suing for something like $62,400 per employee."
Triple damages for wilful behaviour.
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The claim is that Google violated state law, and illegal provisions in contracts are void. Since the illegal actions benefited Google and hurt employees, the idea is to restore some sort of balance. The schizophrenia involved would appear to be the inability to distinguish between damages for illegal acts and plunder.
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Maybe they did cause harm to this person. I don't know. But even so, there's no way they caused 3.8 billion dollars of harm. What is this idiot smoking?
Basically, the lawyer is suing on behalf of everyone. According to the lawsuit (paragraph 98 and 99)
98. Under the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), the penalty for a violation of Labor Code S1102.5 is both $10,000 per violation and "one hundred dollars ($100) for each aggrieved employee per period for the initial violation and two hundred ($200) for each aggrieved employee per pay period for each subsequent violation."
99. Plaintiff seeks, on behalf of himself, the state of California, and all of Google's aggrieved employees, PAGA penalties as set forth above for each employee per pay period within the statutory time frame,
So when you multiply that by 65K employees, that's about $3.8B (according to statutory laws). It took the law firm of Baker Curtis & Schwartz [bakerlp.com] to come up with a lawsuit that "yuge"...
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I don't know a lawyer that would take only 10%. Someone's looking to make it rain.
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It'll be more than that. Lawyers are most likely taking on this case without any payment from the plaintiffs. They are the ones risking millions and years of courts costs upfront for major payday down the line. Amount is that high not to limit plaintiffs damages themselves and to cover pessimistic amount of legal fees. Google's legal strategy could be to drag this case along the courts for a decade. Can you image how much legal bill that'll accrue? People always complain about bloodsucking lawyers but in ca
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It'll be more than that. Lawyers are most likely taking on this case without any payment from the plaintiffs. They are the ones risking millions and years of courts costs upfront for major payday down the line. Amount is that high not to limit plaintiffs damages themselves and to cover pessimistic amount of legal fees. Google's legal strategy could be to drag this case along the courts for a decade. Can you image how much legal bill that'll accrue? People always complain about bloodsucking lawyers but in cases like this they aren't the bad guys. They actually allow the little guys to fight back..
Sure they are. Googles lawyers are bloodsuckers for abusing the system and being willing to use delay as a strategy, the plaintiffs lawyers are bloodsuckers for being willing to let that run up their fees, which they will get while plaintiffs get nothing. The entire legal profession are bloodsuckers for their nod nod wink wink attitude towards this.
Yuge (Score:5, Interesting)
Considering Google apparently made 75 Billion in profits last year, 3.8 Billion hardly seems all that "yuge" when taken into perspective.
Also I'm not sure what writing novels and all the rest is about, but the last time I heard about Google and confidentiality was all about unfair wages and employees sharing information about what they make with each other to get a better idea of how much money they should be making in relation to everyone else.
Seeing as the work produced by said employees profited almost 75 Billion, the lawsuit is for 3.8 Billion, and this is probably about employee wages, it doesn't seem all that unjustified. In fact, without having a valuation that large it would probably be hard to be taken seriously by corporate at all without being ignored or simply just spending who cares how much throwing lawyers at the problem. Even at 3.8 Billion, at almost 1.5B a week, Google could pay off that amount in just over 2 weeks...
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Google had $75 Billion in revenue last year, not $75 Billion in profits.
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They streamlined things for the modern world and dropped the first word of their motto.
Google is a scam (Score:2, Flamebait)
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If they have something to hide then they are not on the right side of the law.
So you'll have no problem posting your SSN, birthdate, and all credit card numbers for us, right?
Not enough information (Score:2)
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Re:Not enough information (Score:5, Interesting)
My guess is that someone was fired for cause...
Obviously he was fired for cause. The cause is violating company policies. He's going to court to challenge the legality of those policies, and therefore the quoted cause for his firing.
I wouldn't be surprised if he wins. Every company in America has written policies that are illegal at least a little bit. They're almost never challenged. Choosing a California company to challenge is probably an easier win than most, since California still has some worker protection laws on the books.
California law seems a little more unusual than I realized. Apparently he's suing on behalf of all Google employees, as well as himself, without getting class action status. I didn't know that was possible. (And possibly it's not.) More likely he'll get the $14,600 statutory award and Google will be ordered to change their policies. And they won't.
Book VS police (Score:1)
There's a big difference between writing a book and contacting authorities. If I get fired for contacting the police/FBI/etc about a relevant matter, it's a lot different than getting fired for writing a tell-all book with what might contain company secrets.
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Likely false. Some states have laws that explicitly state that stuff an employee does that does not use company facilities or company time (and exempt employees are not considered to be on company time 24/7) or things like that are the property of the employee, regardless of any paperwork to the contrary. I believe California has such a law.
You have to be careful, but not super careful. You don't need to hide anything.
Gimme a $100 (Score:1)
$100 says they won't exist in 2020
They don't. They're called Alphabet now. Google is just their porn finder - I mean search engine.
Forget the dollar amount (Score:5, Interesting)
thats the tip of the iceberg. If this gets overturned as illegal you will see other tech companies subjected to the same types of complaints and more importantly, a flood of potential information about the real shenanigans going on and the true level of privacy violations they commit in the course of business.
No one really wants the to illicitly gain access to these companies' metaphorical secret sauces recipies, we just want to make sure the ingredient list doesn't include rat poison.
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Intestines of some description. It may not be rat though.
named meat - that costs extra you know.
ethics/governance contact (Score:3, Interesting)
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Most large companies now have an ethics/goverance contact for exactly this reason: giving an employees an outlet to safely report shady stuff without recrimination, along with a mandatory annual ethics training video. If Google has something like this, they're probably OK and this is just a whiny employee. If not, well then, they will after this lawsuit. (Not getting sued by whistleblowers is largely a solved problem in corporate America: they report, get paid off, and life goes on after some non-public changes.)
How is this OK? Not reporting a crime to the authorities is also an ethics violation. An employer is not "family." Treat anyone at your company like any other stranger walking down the street.
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Most of the "shady stuff" that I referred to would result in civil (think "being sued") lawsuits or regulatory fines rather than criminal (think "being arrested") lawsuits.
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Have you ever actually tried to USE one of the ethics hotlines? Any actual complaints won't be investigated. Calling the hotline is NOT anonymous and basically puts you on a watch list of employees to be fired.
Re:ethics/governance contact (Score:5, Informative)
Have you ever actually tried to USE one of the ethics hotlines?
I did once. About a year after ethics training. The hotline had been disconnected and no longer existed. It no longer appeared in the company directory. I figured the training and hotline were setup as part of a court settlement and that once the terms had been fulfilled, it was all dismantled.
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I used it once. A manager at the company I was working at decided to stop notifying employees about missing time on their time cards until AFTER it was submitted to payroll for processing and thus too late to correct it so the employee got their full pay. It was done as "training on the consequences of not properly reporting your time." I called BS on it, was told "If you want to get paid, submit your time," which is reasonable, but to not even give a person a chance to fix it before it's too late? Nope
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Have you ever actually tried to USE one of the ethics hotlines?
Yup
Any actual complaints won't be investigated.
Actually, it was and I was found to be in the right, my management got spanked for it.
Calling the hotline is NOT anonymous and basically puts you on a watch list of employees to be fired.
Correct. While my management go spanked, I got fired (retaliatory termination). They used the cover of the recent layoffs at my former company to hide it (lawyer agreed that it was unfair dismissal, but flatly told me my case would get buried because I was in the layoffs). So an employee of 17 years with nothing but positive reviews was suddenly bottom rank and terminated...
Funny thing is, I knew what I was in for, b
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As I understand it, you had a choice if you were a low-level employee at Wells Fargo. Don't make the numbers and get fired for it, or make the numbers and be fired for illegal actions when the news got out.
Makes for rich lawyers (Score:1)
I predict they will settle for $1.061 Billion. The lawyers will take $1 Billion and each employee will get a $100 gift card for the Google store.
Re:Seriously... (Score:5, Insightful)
I would normally agree, but if they fire you and then send out an email to everyone telling you how bad you were (and you feel that that's a lie), then that's crossing the line. The industry is pretty small, you're bound to run into many of those people again in later jobs, and the bad reputation of you they are creating can have a real impact down the road.
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Fair enough...that's pretty tacky. Not sure why any organization would send out a mass email about an employee. Unless he was involved in some malicious crap...
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Of course she's a witch! They wouldn't have accused her of being a witch unless she was involved in some malicious crap ...
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I would normally agree, but if they fire you and then send out an email to everyone telling you how bad you were (and you feel that that's a lie), then that's crossing the line. The industry is pretty small, you're bound to run into many of those people again in later jobs, and the bad reputation of you they are creating can have a real impact down the road.
Quite true. Smearing your professional reputation is actual damages. But also realize that personnel matters are legally confidential and sending out an at-large critique of the employee is a clear violation of employment law. Your employment file is not a black-mail dossier for the company to use as it sees fit. There should be heavy penalties for this, on top of considerable actual damages. Only a hit that noticeably dents the bottom line of a corporation will get its attention.
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Nobody owes you employment!
No, but if they do offer you employment, it has to be under the terms of the law.
don't be evil? (Score:1)
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What surprising to me is that somebody still believes that 'don't be evil' motto...
What makes you think somebody still believes it?
This policy isn't "evil" (Score:2)
Just unethical. Big difference!!
One is keeping your employees from talking about the company true or not and over-managing the employees rights to free speech. This is unethical.
The other would be like slicing the throats of all employee's children who don't toe the company line. This is evil.
Are we clear? I hate it when the line gets blurred.
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Personally, I think the State should take over these sort of cases. Dispense what's fair and keep the rest.
Just like how we trusted the state with Civil Forfeiture? How did that turn out again? Oh right it was abused big time. How about we don't give them more tools to abuse.