आईसीटी समाचार
Google must give over 180 documents relating to an internal operation to combat employee union organizing attempts, according to a judge appointed by the National Labor Relations Board. According to one of the emails, a Google attorney described the ongoing campaign, dubbed Project Vivian, as a strategy to "engage employees more favorably and convince them that unions suck" between 2018 and 2020. The records are part of a complaint filed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against Google in December 2020, alleging that the internet giant broke US labor law by spying on and terminating employees who were organizing rallies and attempting to unionize.
Laurence Berland, a former Google employee who was sacked in 2019, was organizing against the company's employment of IRI Consultants, a business notorious for its anti-union activities. He said he was dismissed for peeking at other employees' schedules, which he claimed he did in violation of a Google regulation that the NLRB deemed to be illegal. Kathryn Spiers, a former Google employee, said she was dismissed after creating a pop-up for Google employees visiting the IRI Consultants website. Spiers was fired when the employer claimed she had broken security standards, but the NLRB concluded that her dismissal was also illegal. Google attempted to use attorney-client privilege to protect some of the papers in the case that were subpoenaed.
According to a January 7th ruling obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, administrative law Judge Paul Bogas stated that Google's "broad statement" is "to put it charitably, an overreach." IRI offered Google with "antiunion propaganda and message amplification tactics" customized to Google's workforce, according to Bogas' judgement, but IRI did not provide Google with legal advice protected by attorney-client privilege. In what looked to be an effort to keep the papers confidential, he noted that Google had CC'd its legal counsel on materials that would not be considered privileged otherwise. "Cannot twist the mere fact of a fledgling organizing attempt among employees into'litigation' — like straw spun into gold — that authorizes it to shroud in privilege every facet of its antiunion campaign," he stated.
Google spokesperson Jennifer Rodstrom stated that the underlying case is "about employees breaching clear security protocols to access confidential information and systems inappropriately," noting that "it's about employees breaching clear security protocols to access confidential information and systems inappropriately." She went on to say that IRI is one of Google's "dozens of outside consultants." If Google loses the case, it might be obliged to repay Berland and Spiers their earnings and rehire them.
