Dozens of Google employees from around the country gathered in the shadow of the company’s Mountain View headquarters on Thursday, holding signs reading “Googlers for Job Security” and demanding stronger protections against layoffs.
At noon, nearly 100 workers filled a grassy stretch of the campus, flanked by the Googleplex on one side and the sweeping canopy of Google’s visitor center on the other. Many wore matching black shirts. Others held Alphabet Workers Union placards or helped unfurl a long white banner covered with the names of more than 4,500 employees who signed a petition about job security addressed to CEO Sundar Pichai and three senior executives.
“We want voluntary exits before layoffs, we want guaranteed severance standards, we want an end to performance quotas,” Parul Koul, a Google software engineer and president of the Alphabet Workers Union, which has around 1,400 members, told the crowd. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, employs nearly 191,000 people.
The protest captured a shift that has unsettled workers across the tech industry. Since 2022, companies including Google, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft have cut tens of thousands of jobs, often through repeated rounds that left employees waiting for the next notice. Google laid off 12,000 employees in 2023 and has since conducted several smaller rounds, collectively affecting thousands of employees.
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The company’s workforce, known for pushing management on ethics and corporate policy, is now organizing around something more fundamental: whether employees can count on basic security in an era of rolling layoffs, tougher performance systems, and anxiety over how AI will reshape their jobs.
The petition, which the union first wrote in early 2025, asks Google to guarantee severance for every laid-off worker, offer voluntary exit packages before mandatory cuts, end forced-distribution performance ratings, and let employees receive severance as extended paid leave. The union also wants Google to make voluntary exits a formal policy instead of offering them selectively.
Koul told Business Insider that employees tried to deliver it to Pichai last year and, after receiving no substantive response, continued collecting signatures and returned Thursday with more than twice as many names.
Business Insider attended the event and spoke with Googlers about what they want from the company and why they’re protesting.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Googlers delivered a petition to top execs
About 20 workers began delivering the petition around 9 a.m. on Thursday, Kaylee Lubick, a Google software engineer and union member, told Business Insider.
The group first visited the offices of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian and senior vice presidents Rick Osterloh and Nick Fox. Lubick said the executives were not there to meet with them, and the employees slipped the petition under their doors.
They also went to Pichai’s office, where a member of his team promised to get the petition to the CEO, Lubick said.
The union says Google offered voluntary exit packages to more than 70,000 workers across several rounds since the campaign began. Koul told Business Insider that the figure reflects the number of employees eligible for the offers, not the number who accepted them.
At the protest, speakers described a workplace reshaped by several rounds of layoffs.
“I see worried people, grateful to still have a job, do the best they can to keep it,” said Nobel Barakat, a Google software engineer. “I’ve seen people work longer and longer days with the hopes that they avoid a sudden poor performance rating.”
Matthew Hoffman, a Google DeepMind engineer, said he joined the protest to show his support, even though he had not been personally affected by layoffs and had not yet joined the union.
Pranav Dixit/Business Insider
“I think I realized that just because something hasn’t affected you personally doesn’t mean it won’t someday,” he said.
As television cameras rolled, workers raised their signs and chanted: “Google, Google, can’t you see? We deserve security.”
Google has a history of employee activism
Thursday’s protest drew on Google’s long history of employee activism.
In 2018, more than 4,000 workers opposed Project Maven, a Pentagon contract that used Google’s AI to analyze drone footage. Later that year, roughly 20,000 employees walked out over Google’s handling of sexual-misconduct allegations against senior executives. In 2024, Google fired workers after sit-ins protesting Project Nimbus, its cloud-computing contract with the Israeli government.
On Wednesday, Business Insider reported that a Google DeepMind researcher resigned after the company signed an agreement allowing the Pentagon to use its AI for classified operations. Around 600 employees had urged Google not to enter such a deal.
“We have the power to change things for ourselves,” Koul said. “The only thing preventing us is how organized we are.”
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