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Google Illegally Spied On Workers Before Firing Them, US Labor Board Alleges (theverge.com) 116

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Google violated US labor laws by spying on workers who were organizing employee protests, then firing two of them, according to a complaint to be filed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) today. The complaint names two employees, Laurence Berland and Kathryn Spiers, both of whom were fired by the company in late 2019 in connection with employee activism. Berland was organizing against Google's decision to work with IRI Consultants, a firm widely known for its anti-union efforts, when he was let go for reviewing other employees' calendars. Now, the NLRB has found Google's policy against employees looking at certain coworkers' calendars is unlawful. "Google's hiring of IRI is an unambiguous declaration that management will no longer tolerate worker organizing," Berland said in a statement. "Management and their union busting cronies wanted to send that message, and the NLRB is now sending their own message: worker organizing is protected by law."

Spiers was fired after she created a pop-up for Google employees visiting the IRI Consultants website. "Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities," the notification read, according to The Guardian. The company said Spiers had violated security policies, a statement that hurt her reputation in the tech community. Now, the NLRB has found the firing was unlawful. "This week the NLRB issued a complaint on my behalf. They found that I was illegally terminated for trying to help my colleagues," Spiers said. "Colleagues and strangers believe I abused my role because of lies told by Google management while they were retaliating against me. The NLRB can order Google to reinstate me, but it cannot reverse the harm done to my credibility."

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Google Illegally Spied On Workers Before Firing Them, US Labor Board Alleges

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  • and what will that do?
    Get back seniority?
    Get back PTO and PTO rate?
    Get back same job and shift
    Get back same pay rate?
    Have recourse for being fired for any other thing?

    • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      Get a permanent record in Google files, that every employment agency has access to and be blocked from tech employment at any major corporation for life!

      What they have done for us, demonstrated exactly what Alphabet/Google do with all the information they data mine, attack those who they deem are a threat to their profits and ego and economically DESTROY them. Drop that extremely negative rating in the corporate social media score, FLAGGED in other words.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday December 02, 2020 @06:34PM (#60787416)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Q-Hack! ( 37846 )

      While I hate to be on the side of the evil that is Google, I do remember when these idiots were fired. They were let go simply because they broke with company policy that states something to the effect of Thou shall not publicly discuss company procedures. Had they only been recruiting on the inside, and then subsequently let go, they would have a leg to stand on. Posting a bunch of shit talk on Twitter, unfortunately for them, counts as a public forum.
           

    • Re:Not surprised (Score:4, Insightful)

      by fred911 ( 83970 ) on Wednesday December 02, 2020 @06:56PM (#60787482) Journal

      ''anecdotal evidence that these Silicon Valley companies operate like the Gestapo.''

      Oh no, the Gestapo wasn't as creative. The biggest evil ''Silicon Valley'' has been successfully doing over the past 10 years is to shield themselves from the responsibility, liability and expense for the majority of the tasks, skills and talent used for the work they specifically create, direct and specify quality standards for, so as to feign equal compensation or responsibility for requirements of completion of the work per their standards.

      In doing so they have created a class of experts that aren't equally compensated, and a number of businesses that make the majority of their income hiring talent to their specs, that they can easily wash their hands of any responsibility for the perpetual use of.

      If a business creates tasks, directs employees how to properly execute tasks, requires employees to execute said tasks in the manner they direct, holds that employee [even in a tertiary manner] to maintain those standards,
      they are the employer, regardless of how they are paying them currently.

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      I don't care what your political beliefs are, but there is PLENTY of anecdotal evidence that these Silicon Valley companies operate like the Gestapo.

      It's not just "Silicon Valley" companies, but a good many large companies. I can tell you multiple stories about a very large and old company that rhymes with "ate tea and pee" that I once contracted with.

      The US is a semi-plutocracy. The rich and powerful essentially buy legislators and laws, and it's not being corrected by voters because they are (intentionall

  • by Anonymous Coward

    why wouldn't they also spy on employees

  • Deterrent Required (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ytene ( 4376651 ) on Wednesday December 02, 2020 @06:34PM (#60787420)
    As the comments attributed to Kathryn Spiers in the OP show, in a scenario like this it is virtually impossible for an employer to provide reasonable reparations to an employee who has been mis-treated in this way.

    Yes, it's possible for the company to be forced to re-instate them. Would you want to go back?
    It's possible for the company to be forced to change their practices. Until they find another loophole to exploit.

    And so, much as this might be abhorrent to C-suite occupants across the country, the only thing to do is strengthen the law until the penalty for being "found out" act as a deterrent that is powerful enough to stop the company from their malpractice.

    Here's a few things that a law could do:-

    1. Fine the company a significant amount of money [i.e. based on their global gross turnover] and then award a portion of that [i.e. based on multiples of their salary] to the injured employee.

    2. Prohibit the company from being awarded any government contracts for a period of time [say 3 years for a first offence; then 5, 10, 20, 50, etc.] so that there is a financial impact on the employer for the practice.

    3. Require the company to pay the cost of allowing an independent monitoring third party - like an audit company - to stay on site for a period [of say 3 years, then 5, 10, 20, etc.] and both act as an intermediary and to police the company [with right to access emails, documents, records of meetings, etc. and to "sit in" in any disciplinary hearings]

    You get the idea.

    Yes, there will be people who read the above suggestions and think, "Hang on, that's a bit drastic. Surely you don't need to be so heavy-handed with a company, do you?"

    Yes. Yes, you do. That's because companies that undermine lawful activities like organizing have the power to destroy entire careers, entire lives. We probably remember the way that Google treated James Damore. I'm not arguing to support what Damore wrote, but to point out that Damore's manager initially supported him and encouraged him to develop and post his document internally - but the moment it became politically embarrassing for Google, Damore was fired.

    It's the fact that they fired him for no reason other than it became politically expedient for them to do so that is an illustration of a company that has too much power.

    There are entire industry sectors - construction used to be a good example - where employers kept files on employees - if you were blacklisted as an organizer you'd never get another job with a major employer or on a major contract.

    Employers have become so incredibly powerful already, it seems almost comical that Google would feel the need to undermine lawful organizing. The fact they do is probably the best argument in favour of a more impactful deterrent we could think of.
    • "sit in" in any disciplinary hearings UNION YES!

      • by ytene ( 4376651 )
        The things to bear in mind - the reasons I made explicit mention of disciplinary hearings are that:-

        1. In a typical corporate disciplinary review, the employer takes three roles, the employee gets one. Those employer roles are [to borrow from legal vernacular]:

        i. Counsel for the Prosecution
        ii. Judge
        iii. Jury

        Even in scenarios where the employer acts with total integrity, honesty and transparency, that's a stacked deck. It gives the employer *so much* power, that they can arbitrarily decide to take
  • Google's motto:
    "Do no evil" (Transmission ended unexpectedly)
    (Transmission resumed)
    "for the shareholders"
  • by SysEngineer ( 4726931 ) on Wednesday December 02, 2020 @06:36PM (#60787428)
    Late stage capitalism will see Super Corporations.
    Google has a Monopolistic data path, acquire data, store data, process data, sell data, There is no competition to sell data from the acquire to the storage. 100% of Google data goes to Google data processing. or not used.
    Each stage is not a monopoly but the sum of all the stages of Google is a monopoly.
    • Ongoing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Wednesday December 02, 2020 @06:42PM (#60787444)

      Late stage capitalism will see Super Corporations.

      That's what they said about the East India Trading Company. And US Steel. And IBM. And General Motors. And Standard Oil. And AT&T.

      We've been in "late stage" capitalism for centuries.

      • Late stage capitalism will see Super Corporations.

        That's what they said about the East India Trading Company. And US Steel. And IBM. And General Motors. And Standard Oil. And AT&T.

        We've been in "late stage" capitalism for centuries.

        At that time they were monopolies, but there was also the "Locke's Wilderness" back then, that allowed for growth. If you look at cost of resources, and the cost of patents now, there is not much wilderness to left. Machine Learning is the new wilderness area, But I am afraid of what made be found there.
        How smart is it to make something smarter than us?

      • Late stage capitalism will see Super Corporations.

        That's what they said about the East India Trading Company. And US Steel. And IBM. And General Motors. And Standard Oil. And AT&T.

        We've been in "late stage" capitalism for centuries.

        Rome was never granted Too Big To Fail status, unlike mega-corps today who can obtain a valuation of billions while never actually turning a fucking profit.

        Much like the problem of automation and AI decimating the human workforce in the future, you can stop looking at history as if you're going to find an answer there. There isn't one. The game, has changed, not just the rules. And unless many governments figure out how to deal with mega-corps (other than waiving their right to pay any tax and giving out

      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        Let's see what happened to them. East India Company was nationalized. AT&T was broken up. Standard Oil was broken up. GM and U.S. Steel were at least partially checked by unions.

        Perhaps the new crop of huge corporations are about due for correction.

    • I am against a generalisation as it targets the free economy. Better create laws requiring unions for large companies. We already demand gender and racial diversity, no discrimination of any kind, etc., and we should follow this line of thinking. Protect employees when and where necessary, but otherwise leave corporations as much freedom and power as possible. Anything that limits the ability to compete is however not only going to damage corporations, but all of us. Our corporations are in a sense our armi

      • We already demand gender and racial diversity

        no discrimination of any kind

        These two things are mutually exclusive.

        • No, you're wrong. You're just failing at seeing how you are creating a circular argument for yourself.

          • DEMANDING gender and racial diversity is the very definition of discrimination. Requiring gender and race blindness is requiring no discrimination of any kind. You cannot select, even partially, on basis of gender or race and claim no no discrimination of any kind; particularly if it is demanded.
            • Again, what you have is a circular argument. To take on your thinking would mean to believe there was always discrimination, thus not ever no discrimination, and hence indistinguishable from one another, so therefore there is no discrimination. In short, it makes on sense.

              You will have to accept that there is such a thing as no discrimination, i.e. the percentage of male vs. female in nature, which is about 49% to 51%, and not run off arguing nature itself was somehow discriminating humans. It simply isn't

              • You will have to accept that there is such a thing as no discrimination.

                I accept it wholeheartedly. However it directly contradicts a governmental requirement for diversity, whatever that means. They cannot co-exist. You cannot claim no discrimination on one hand and require business to carefully discriminate based on race, gender or whatever on another. This was the entire mandate basis of Affirmative Action: if two equally qualified candidates apply, you choose the under represented group. i.e discrimination. True fairness and non discrimination would require flipping a

                • ... However it directly contradicts a governmental requirement for diversity, whatever that means. ...

                  It means to end discrimination. I'm going to ignore you though, because you're just going in circles. Remember when I wrote you're having a circular argument? That's why you don't get out of your loop.

                  • You are the one arguing in circles. "It doesn't count when I discriminate because I'm using it as a means to an end." That's called hypocrisy.
    • "Late-stage Capitalism" is a fantasy perpetuated by academic Socialists still clinging to the belief that Marx was some sort of economic prophet. It is a silly concept with no correspondence in reality.

      The foundation of the idea rests entirely upon the absurd proposition that Marx developed some sort of "scientific history" that allowed him to accurately predict the future. It would not be possible to identify the end stage of anything before it happened unless one had the ability to accurately predict

  • On one hand it's good to see a company get called out for doing something illegal.

    On the other hand, this is more showboating by the outgoing failure to "stick it" to big tech. Since he couldn't tie Pentagon funding to a review or revocation of Rule 230 [cbsnews.com], this is how he's getting back. Expect to see more cases like this over the next month and a half before he's escorted off the premises.

  • by xavdeman ( 946931 ) on Wednesday December 02, 2020 @06:42PM (#60787442)

    I bet these employees would like some tolerance of diverse *opinions* right now and to be able to share some social commentary with their colleagues without the employer retaliating.

  • by wakeboarder ( 2695839 ) on Wednesday December 02, 2020 @06:51PM (#60787464)

    you'd use yahoo to search for IRI consultants and use Microsoft teams to organize the protest.

  • Huh? Don't think so!

  • How can a company not spy on their workers?

    Time clock is spying on your work hours.
    Manager is spying on your work.
    Customers are spying on your companies quality and value.
    Retail stores video tape all workers.
    So, Google is not supposed to check if their workers are actually working?
  • Seriously, Sundar Pichai needs to be fired. He is DESTROYING google/alphabet since he is inept.
  • Um, spying? They looked at a slide deck! .. That's pretty weak "spying". I don't envision that being made into the plot of a James Bond movie. Real spying would be if they setup webcams or mics or something like that .. viewing someone's slide deck, which was (speculation here) apparently public and open to other employees, is hardly "spying."

  • ... was once Google' motto. Apparently not anymore.
    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      ... was once Google' motto. Apparently not anymore.

      That has happened a long time ago.

  • She pushed an un-reviewed and unprofessional commit for an internal tool used company wide.

    What reputation is there for Google to hurt? If Google wasn't now forced to put her on the payroll she'd never get hired for a security role ever again.

  • When I first read that I was thinking - what don't they know about almost every one of us? They probably know down to the bathroom habits of most of us. Where we eat, where we go, who we see. Even what we say. What we're interested in.

  • She literally published a piece of code that would spy on her colleagues and push her own agenda. This was likely illegal. She could've used mailing lists or bulletin boards to spread her message, instead she hacked into coworkers systems.

  • ... nationalize!

We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts. -- Patrick Moynihan

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