Author: Taylor Magnuson | UC Berkeley School of Law | J.D. Candidate 2020 | Posted: February 24, 2020 | Download PDF.
The tide has turned at Google. The mega-tech company no longer wants to play on the playground of heated political debates at the workplace. This is a drastic change from Google’s prior stance on politics at the workplace. Previously, Google sponsored internal mailing lists, message boards, and employee groups dedicated to politics. [1,2] In fact, two years ago, Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, announced during a company meeting that Trump’s 2016 win was “deeply offensive” [3] and “many people apparently don’t share the values that we have.” [4] In November 2018, over 20,000 employees walked out of Google for paying off executives accused of sexually harassing employees. [5] Both Liberal and Conservative employees have accused Google of retaliation against their beliefs. [6] Politicians, consumers, and employees now ask Google to rein the politics in.
On August 22, 2019, Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, announced new employee guidelines on how fellow Googlers communicate. [7] The new guidelines restrict employees’ use of company communication forums to discuss politics, including removing discussion forums, revoking commenting, viewing, or posting privileges, and threatening potential disciplinary action. [8,9] Pichai’s announcement comes on the heels of Google employees’ political fervor distracting employees from successfully completing their work during the day, “While sharing information and ideas with colleagues helps build community, disrupting the workday to have a raging debate over politics or the latest news story does not. Our primary responsibility is to do the work we’ve each been hired to do, not to spend working time on debates about non-work topics.” [10]
Google’s new employee guidelines forbid employees from making offensive comments about almost anyone. [11] “Don’t troll, name call, or engage in ad hominem attacks–about anyone. This includes making statements that insult, demean, or humiliate (whether individually or by reference to groups) other employees, our extended workforce, our business partners, or others (including public figures), or that violate other standards of conduct or policies against harassment and bullying.” [12] Public figures include the President of the United States. [13]
In a reaction to employees whistleblowing discrete controversial government projects, Google has attempted to regulate speech further. [14] Employees cannot share “false or misleading” information about Google’s products or “need-to-know” information. [15] Previously, employees released details about Project Maven and Project Dragonfly to the press. [16] Project Maven was Google’s artificial intelligence to assist in U.S. military drones and Project Dragonfly consisted of building a censored search engine for China. [17] Google abandoned both projects after the leak. [18]
Although Google altered its policies to stop political polarization in the workplace, Google faced a lawsuit accusing the company of restricting free speech. [19] An ex-employee, Kevin Cernekee, accused Google of retaliating against his conservative views through termination. [20] As a part of the proposed accepted settlement, the National Labor Relations Board ordered Google to tell their employees that they have the right to discuss politics and workplace issues during work. [21] Google denies that the settlement relates to political speech, “Under that settlement, we have agreed to post a notice to our employees reminding them of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act. There is absolutely no mention of political activity in the proposed settlement, and the updates we made to our Community Guidelines are completely unrelated and unaffected.” [22]
It appears another extremity is not the proper answer to resolving Google’s political culture crisis.
[1] Christopher Carbone, Google wants employees to stop talking politics at work, NY Post (Aug. 27, 2019) https://nypost.com/2019/08/27/google-wants-its-employees-to-stop-discussing-politics-at-work/.
[2] Shirin Ghaffary, Google is cracking down on its employees’ political speech at work, Vox (Aug. 23, 2019) https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/8/23/20829430/google-new-community-guidelines-employees-political-speech-internal-debate.
[3] Christopher Carbone, Google wants employees to stop talking politics at work.
[4]Shirin Ghaffary, Google is cracking down on its employees’ political speech at work.
[5] Id.
[6] Id.
[7] Christopher Carbone, Google wants employees to stop talking politics at work.
[8] Id.
[9] Community Guidelines, Google https://about.google/community-guidelines/.
[10] Id.
[11] Id.
[12] Id.
[13] Shirin Ghaffary, Google is cracking down on its employees’ political speech at work.
[14] Id.
[15] Id.
[16] Christopher Carbone, Google wants employees to stop talking politics at work.
[17] Shirin Ghaffary, Google is cracking down on its employees’ political speech at work.
[18] Id.
[19] Annie Palmer, Government orders Google to allow employees not to restrict employees’ free speech, CNBC (Sep. 12, 2019) https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/12/nlrb-orders-google-to-allow-employees-to-discuss-politics-at-work.html.
[20] Id.
[21] Id.
[22] Id.