Google Zurich employees launch protest against 'unnecessary' layoffs

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
15 Mar 19:17

The decision to carry out mass layoffs was issued earlier in January this year.

Google staff walked out in Zurich on Wednesday march 15, 2023 (Syndicom)

The Swiss trade union representing communication, IT, and media workers Syndicom said on Wednesday that an estimated 400-500 employees from Google's branch in Zurich staged mass walkouts after the company announced the layoff of 200 workers.

The decision to carry out mass layoffs was issued earlier in January this year.

"Rallying around the slogan ‘we walk out for those who can't walk back in’, 400 - 500 Google employees in Zurich left their workplace at 11 am [10:00 GMT] in protest. Yesterday, the company announced the layoffs. Google did not take into account the broadly supported proposals of the staff to avoid the dismissals," the according to a statement issued by the trade union.

Sad to hear that the layoffs Google announced in January have reached Zurich today, and software engineers (predictably) are also hit.

I'm working on refreshing the advice I gave to people at Uber, when we had cuts in 2020. A lot of this won't apply any more, sadly: pic.twitter.com/Nr4xBLzhWJ
— Gergely Orosz (@GergelyOrosz) March 14, 2023

Google Zurich employees said they attempted to push through several proposals in order to avoid the layoffs, yet the company rejected all of them.

One of the proposals involved reducing the number of working hours for about 2,500 employees.

The trade union said that protesters were outraged over the fact that parent company Alphabet Inc. decided to lay off 5% of the workforce despite it generating billions in profits.

"The employee representation committee, together with the Syndicom union, are now in talks with Google to negotiate an extended social plan. The social plan must contain specific measures to further reduce the number of employees affected and to find new employment as quickly as possible," the statement read.

#Google hat an seinem Sitz in Zürich 250 Angestellte entlassen. Rund 500 Google-Mitarbeitende protestierten am Mittag gegen die Entlassungen beim Tech-Giganten. @syndicom_de @Google_CH https://t.co/8fmwDPDXzZ pic.twitter.com/VpPlEcvHxn
— IT-Markt (@itmarkt) March 15, 2023

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, Calico, YouTube, Android, Nest, Ventures, Google Capital, Google X, and Google Life Sciences, recorded its annual net income for 2022 at $59.972 billion, a 21.12% decline from 2021.

This comes in light of a slew of tech layoffs in recent months. Several tech companies have been laying off employees on massive scales since late 2022, including Microsoft, Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange, Meta, Twitter, Amazon, Netflix, and other companies.