Google on Monday fired four employees, including a software engineer who was at the center of a San Francisco rally last week, for accessing and sharing internal documents and calendars.
The latest development occurred Monday when Google sent an email to all staff members describing its decision to fire four employees for allegedly violating its data-security policies. Google confirmed the contents of the email titled “Securing our data,” as reports were obtained.
One of those fired was Rebecca Rivers, a software engineer who was at the center of a rally last week after she was indefinitely suspended. She was put on leave over allegations she had accessed documents not pertinent to her work at the tech giant.
Rivers was suspended last week for accessing documents that didn’t belong to her and she leave promoted a rally outside Google’s San Francisco office on Friday where about 200 people gathered. About 200 showed up for the rally on Friday outside Google’s San Francisco offices to protest the action against Rivers and that of another engineer, Laurence Berland, who is accused of improperly accessing colleagues’ internal calendars.
Rivers contended that Google’s investigations team questioned her about her participation in organizing a petition against Google’s with CBP and her social media usage.
The news comes as Google employees continue to engage in protests and organized walkouts over issues such as the company’s handling of sexual harassment allegations against executives, inadequate action on climate change, the pursuit of military contracts, and the potential development of a censored search engine service in China.
The company declined to comment beyond confirming the contents of the email.
