Following the layoffs of 12,000 employees in January 2023 and at least 1,000 more a year later, Google workers are banding together to ask company leaders for more job security.
Earlier this week, the Alphabet Workers Union for Google workers in the U.S. and Canada created a petition addressed to Google CEO Sundar Pichai by his first name calling out the “instability at Google” due to layoffs.
In order to sign the petition, employees must disclose their names, office locations, and non-corporate emails. It’s been signed by 1,343 employees at the time of writing.
“Ongoing rounds of layoffs make us feel insecure about our jobs,” the petition reads. “The company is clearly in a strong financial position, making the loss of so many valuable colleagues without explanation hurt even more.”
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Google’s latest earnings report, released in late October, shows that total Google Services revenue increased by 13% year-over-year to $76.5 billion, led by Google Search strength, YouTube ads, and Google subscriptions revenue. Google Cloud revenue also grew by 35% to $11.4 billion.
Pichai called the company’s growth “extraordinary.”
However, on the earnings call, Google CFO Anat Ashkenazi said that Google could “push a little further” with cost-cutting measures, and will look at “additional opportunities” to reduce costs.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Photo by Mateusz Wlodarczyk/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The petition asks Google to pay every laid-off worker a guaranteed minimum severance package starting at 16 weeks of salary, plus two weeks for every additional year at Google. This was the severance package Google offered in January 2023.
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It also asks for buyouts before layoffs, or for Google to offer employees a financial incentive package to voluntarily leave the company before laying people off involuntarily.
The petition additionally called out Googler Reviews and Development (GRAD), Google’s performance review system which the tech giant introduced in May 2022. According to Google employees, GRAD asks managers to achieve a particular distribution of ratings over employees instead of looking at the merits of each person individually.
The petition asks Google to get rid of GRAD quotas.
A Google spokesperson told CNBC that Google does not have rating distribution requirements for GRAD and that employees are already rated based on individual performance.
Big tech has undergone massive layoffs in recent years. In August, Intel announced layoffs affecting 15,000 people and in October, Dropbox let go of more than 500 employees. Earlier this month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company would be laying off more than 3,000 employees. According to tracker Layoffs.fyi, 546 tech companies laid off 152,074 employees in 2024.
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