New Delhi: In an open letter to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Google staff have requested better treatment for employees after the IT giant announced 12,000 job cuts.
The letter, written by 1,400 employees, lays down a series of demands that seek to introduce some method to the madness of job cuts.
The letter was written by a cluster of employees who were supported by worker unions, namely the Alphabet Workers Union, United Tech and Allied Workers, and UNI Global, Bloomberg reported.
The letter was informed by discussions that took place on a Discord channel that was set up following the announcement of job cuts by Alphabet.
In the letter, employees have made a few key requests to Pichai — the new hires should be frozen and instead, recently laid-off workers should be considered for rehiring and internal transfers; they have sought that the company ask employees for voluntary redundancy and time reduction instead of forced layoffs that workers from troubled countries such as Russia and Ukraine are not laid off since this would have an adverse effect on their visa and force them to return to “unsafe or unstable countries”.
The letter further added that Alphabet should consider hiring laid-off workers over new candidates for any job vacancies; that employees on paid time off for reasons such as childbirth, caregiving, or bereavement should be allowed to complete their leave before being informed about being made redundant; they should be informed in person and allowed to say goodbye to their teams.
That there are no “discriminatory effects” in play during layoffs based on factors such as sex, gender identity and expression, ageism, sexual orientation, racial identity or ethnicity, and caste. The company should also watch for discrimination on the basis of the staff’s veteran status, religion, and disability, the letter states.
In the letter, the 1,400 workers stated that their voice has not been considered by the company while announcing the global layoffs.
The employees have sought a public commitment from Pichai to “doing right by its users and workers”. This will ensure that the company adheres to an important part of its code of conduct, which is “Don’t be evil”, according to the letter. The redundancies started off immediately in the US, while those in other parts of the world were slow to start.
In Switzerland, information about the workers who were laid off was only shared this week. This triggered a walkout on Wednesday.