Member of Google's 'Thanksgiving Four' reveals they organized protests against the company because they were upset their software was being used to help immigration authorities, in first interview since they were abruptly fired
- Four Google employees who organized protests were fired on November 25
- Laurence Berland, Sophie Waldman, Rebecca Rivers and Paul Duke were fired
- They were involved in petitions to oppose Google Cloud's contract with CBP
- Google says that they were fired for accessing confidential internal documents
The four Google employees who were fired over Thanksgiving week after organizing staff protests over working conditions and the company's contracts with U.S. Customs and Border Protection have spoken out in their first interviews since being sacked.
Laurence Berland, Paul Duke, Rebecca Rivers and Sophie Waldman were all fired from Google on Monday, November 25.
Now they are speaking out in new interviews with New York Times Magazine, describing the controversial firings that resulted in them quickly being described on social media as the 'Thanksgiving Four.'
All four were involved in organizing protests over employee working conditions or the CBP contracts — but Google insists that they were terminated for violating employee policies, including inappropriately accessing internal company documents.
The firings came amid increasing employee upheaval at Google, where in recent years staffers have created uproar over sexual harassment policies, government contracts, and other hot-button issues.
Left to right: Rebecca Rivers, Sophie Waldman and Laurence Berland are three of the four Google employees who were fired on November 25
Google employees are seen at a November 2018 walkout to protest the company's handling of sexual harassment complaints. Google's work force has been increasingly roiled by political protests and complaints about contracts with the Trump administration
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Though it has long been considered one of the cushiest, most free-wheeling workplaces, Google bosses have been forced to crack down as employee discontent and political disputes in the workplace increasingly threatened to disrupt business.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com.
The saga of the 'Thanksgiving Four' began last summer, when Google employees demanded in a petition that the company not participate in the bidding process for a CBP contract for IT infrastructure.
Employees were emboldened by a string of protests in 2018, including a mass walkout over the company's handling of sexual harassment claims, and a revolt that shut down Google's participation in the Pentagon's Project Maven, which used AI to improve drone targeting systems.
Rivers, in the new interview, says that the petition against the CBP bid made her wonder if Google was already working with the agency. Rivers used internal search tools that turned up evidence of three contracts with the agency that had been sold through third-party vendors.
One of the deals with CPB, a Google Maps contract for about $600,000, was crushing to Rivers, who had personally built several features for the Maps project.
Rivers said that she had imagined her Maps tools being used for humanitarian work and good deeds. 'The worst I thought it could be used for was making rich people more rich,' Rivers said, describing what she thought until she discovered the CBP contracts, which were far more upsetting to her, even than helping the rich.
The discovery that CBP was potentially using her software for immigration enforcement was 'gut-wrenching', said Rivers. 'It was the software I wrote that I was most proud of.'
Google's contracts with CBP were the reason Rivers decided to organize protests. She was upset about the contracts. Rivers said she passed the information she had gathered about the CBP contracts to co-worker Waldman, who combined it with information and disseminated it to other colleagues.
Rebecca Rivers (left and right) found information about three contracts Google had with CBP through third-party vendors and disseminated the info to colleagues
'If workers aren't told what the real purpose of their work is, they have no agency in deciding whether or not they want to help with those things,' Berland said. 'They become unwittingly complicit.'
Berland and Duke also became involved in organizing over the working conditions and the treatment of employees, and used internal tools to gather information to support their cause.
'In my orientation, I was encouraged to read all the design documents I could find, look at anything about how decisions are made,' said Duke. 'Now they're saying that's no longer OK. That is a major shift in culture.'
Berland subscribed to the open calendars of several executives that he suspected were meeting with a union-busting consultancy.
In November, Rivers and Berland were abruptly put on administrative leave.
Rivers says that one day her security badge didn't work. 'I called the badging office, and they didn't know; they reactivated me,' Rivers told NYT Magazine. 'It was a very rushed turn of events.'
Google site reliability engineer Laurence Berland addresses fellow employees at a rally in San Francisco on November 22, three days before he was fired from the company
Rebecca Rivers (left) and Laurence Berland (right) are seen at the November 22 protest
The Friday before he was fired, Berland had spoken at a rally of his co-workers outside Google's San Francisco offices, accusing the company of silencing dissent.
The following Monday, Berland was getting off the subway in New York when he was fired by an email: 'Following a thorough investigation, the company has found that you committed several acts in violation of Google's policies.'
'I thought they'd do it when all the media attention died down,' Berland said. 'When the suspensions and the rally were no longer on people's minds.'
Rivers, a software engineer based in Boulder, Colorado, was dismissed over the phone after accessing internal documents.
Rivers had recently come out as transgender and was pursuing a medical transition.
'I came out at Google expecting to stay at Google through the entire transition,' Rivers said. 'It's terrifying to think about going to a job interview, because I'm so scared of how other companies treat trans employees.'
Waldman, a software developer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said she was given a 15-minute notice of a surprise meeting, and was fired on the spot when she arrived.
Though it has long been considered one of the cushiest, most free-wheeling workplaces, Google bosses have been forced to crack down amid employee discontent
Duke, an engineer in New York, said a meeting invitation appeared on his calendar precisely one minute beforehand.
In an internal memo that leaked to the press, the company said the workers were involved in 'systematic' searches for material 'outside the scope of their jobs.'
It also cited an employee's efforts to track information on the calendars of colleagues 'outside of their work group.'
'We dismissed four individuals who were engaged in intentional and often repeated violations of our longstanding data-security policies,' a spokeswoman told NYT Magazine. 'No one has been dismissed for raising concerns or debating the company's activities.'
The fired employees vow that their former colleagues at Google will continue fighting to improving working conditions, and to protest business lines that they view as immoral.
'Management can decide whether or not to get on board,' Berland told the magazine. 'But Google workers are increasingly aware of the power they have. They're going to continue to exercise that power, and in the end, they're going to prevail.'
