Just a few months after global walkouts at Google LLC offices, the company is now facing criticism for trying to urge the U.S. government to prevent workers from organizing protests online.

As first reported by Bloomberg Thursday, the National Labor Relations Board during the Obama administration set a precedent that would allow workers to use company email and infrastructure to drum up support for things such as walkouts. It turns out that is something Google wanted to change.

After a Freedom of Information Act request, it was revealed that Google had asked the National Labor Relations Board both in May 2017 and in November 2018 to undo that precedent. While the rule is in place, it means that employers cannot reprimand employees for arranging walkouts, starting petitions or forming unions using company email.

This in fact protected workers during the November walkout last year. Google’s last filing that asked that the standard “be overruled” came after the big walkout.

Google denied that the filing has anything to do with the walkout, and was in fact related to an ongoing case with the NLRB that was filed in 2015. “We’re not lobbying for changes to any rules,” Google said in a statement to Bloomberg. “This was a legal defense that we included as one of many possible defenses in the response to a charge.”

Some Google employees don’t see it that way.

“In an email to all of Google, Sundar Pichai assured us that he and Google’s leadership supported the Walkout,” a Google Walkout group said in a statement on Twitter. “But the company’s requests to the National Labor Relations Board tell a different story showing that Google would rather pay lawyers to change national labor law than do what’s right. Google is aiming to silence us at a time when our voices are more essential than ever.”

Pichai has said he supported the walkout. But Google employee activist Colin McMillen told Bloomberg, “It demonstrates that Google leadership is not operating in good faith.” He went on to say that while Google issues “soothing words” to employees, in the background the company is trying to prevent workers from coordinating.

Photo: Drew Tarvin/Flickr