As the technology industry invests heavily in artificial intelligence (AI), Google employees are taking action to fight for job security. On July 16, local time, Google employees submitted a petition to the company’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, demanding the establishment of a clear layoff protection mechanism amid the current wave of industry layoffs.
The petition, led and launched by Alphabet's union, has more than 4,500 employee signatures. Parul Kur, a Google software engineer and president of Alphabet's union, said outside Google's headquarters in California that despite the company's current valuation of up to $4 trillion, management continues to cut staff and put profits before the interests of employees. When delivering the petition, Kuhl noted that this was the largest employee feedback on job security in Google's history.
The demands made by employees in the petition include providing clear severance pay guarantees, prioritizing buyout options before compulsory layoffs, and including severance pay as an option for extended paid leave. In addition, employees also demand that the current performance evaluation system be abolished, believing that the current evaluation criteria are more based on hard quotas rather than work performance.
In the process of submitting the petition, the employees did not receive a direct response from the company's top management, and a staff member finally received the document and promised to forward it.
In the past period of time, Google has repeatedly reported layoffs. Although the company did not explicitly attribute the layoffs directly to AI, both Google and its parent company Alphabet listed AI as a core investment area in their financial reports and continued to increase related investments. At the same time, anxiety about AI layoffs is spreading throughout Silicon Valley. A few days ago, dozens of Meta employees filed a lawsuit, accusing the company of using AI tools to screen and target employees who applied for protective leave such as maternity leave or disability leave. Meta denied this.
In addition to Google, many technology giants have also laid off employees recently. Oracle has laid off approximately 21,000 employees in the past year, and hinted in its annual report that AI applications may lead to further layoffs; Block laid off approximately 4,000 employees this year, and CEO Jack Dorsey clearly mentioned that this was due to the efficiency improvements brought by AI; Microsoft also announced this month that it would lay off approximately 4,800 employees in its business, including the Xbox gaming division, to further invest resources in the AI field.
Faced with various changes, Google employees said that although the union has previously fought for voluntary separation plans for more than 70,000 employees, there are still many core demands that have not been taken seriously by management. Engineers who participated in the event said that as AI is forced into job requirements, employees' fear of being replaced is increasing. Currently, Alphabet’s union is trying to put pressure on the company’s management through continued organizational mobilization to deal with the career uncertainty caused by the AI transformation cycle.