During a presentation by an executive with Google’s Israel branch on Monday, a Google Cloud engineer stood up and shouted, “I refuse to build technology that powers genocide or surveillance.” They - eviltoast
  • maynarkh@feddit.nl
    21·
    8 months ago

    You can get fired, but not “on the spot” and at worst, the employer has to pay your next month’s paycheck. That stands even if you were fired with good cause.

    So here’s what would have happened, were this a Dutch company. Employee does the thing, employer says that they should leave, and they offer 1-2 months of a severance so the employee resigns on their own volition and the company avoids going to court. If the employee has more than 2 braincells, he gets a lawyer (there are good pro bono lawyers who work for free if you’re not well paid enough to get one). Lawyer advises asking for 6-8 months.

    Company has two choices:

    • Pay 6-8 months of severance.
    • Drag the employee into labour court, which usually leans towards employees, and try to publicly argue about whether what they are doing is legal. Obviously it’s not going to about whether it’s about Google committing genocide or not, but obviously the media won’t care, and the words “Google” and “genocide” are going to be in the news in various combinations for a good year. All the while the company has to keep paying the employee, the most they can do is to order him to give back all equipment and prohibit him from contacting coworkers.
      • maynarkh@feddit.nl
        21·
        8 months ago

        I guess the difference is that instead of being fired, you most likely get to leave on your own terms that you dictate largely. What I mean is you don’t get fired, you resign, and can refer to the incident as you have resigned. If you don’t want to resign, you can most likely stay in the fucked up work relationship.

        I guess the main difference is not what you get, but that Google would have to argue in court that it is fine to fire the guy. And the court case comes before the firing, so if it lasts 10 years like all those cases you hear about, the guy keeps being employed.