A complaint was filed today by the National Labor Relations Board accusing Google LLC of breaking U.S. labor laws.

The company is accused of illegally spying on workers and also questioning them, before firing staff who were behind protests in 2019. The workers were also trying to form a union. The complaint names former employees Laurence Berland and Kathryn Spiers.

After Spiers was let go, she claimed that she had received excellent performance reviews and had been given a promotion just two months before she was fired. Spiers and Berland, as well as two other employees that were let go, later filed a complaint with the NLRB claiming they had been fired for internal activism.

Google disagreed, stating, “We dismissed four individuals who were engaged in intentional and often repeated violations of our longstanding data security policies, including systematically accessing and disseminating other employees’ materials and work.”

At the time, Google hired IRI Consultants, a firm known for going into companies and persuading employees not to join a union. Berland had tried to organize people to go against Google hiring IRI, and in doing so he looked at staff calendars.  For that, he was fired, although now the NLRB is saying that was not a sackable offense.

“Google’s hiring of IRI is an unambiguous declaration that management will no longer tolerate worker organizing,” Berland said in a statement to media. “Management and their union-busting cronies wanted to send that message, and the NLRB is now sending their own message: worker organizing is protected by law.”

The reason Spiers was fired, according to Google, was for creating a pop-up message informing staff of their right to protest. Google said this damaged the reputation of the company and flouted security policies. In the complaint, NLRB said this was also unlawful.

“This week the NLRB issued a complaint on my behalf,” Spiers said in a statement. “They found that I was illegally terminated for trying to help my colleagues. Colleagues and strangers believe I abused my role because of lies told by Google management while they were retaliating against me. The NLRB can order Google to reinstate me, but it cannot reverse the harm done to my credibility.”

Google said in a statement that it was confident it had done the right thing and followed the rule of law. “Actions undertaken by the employees at issue were a serious violation of our policies and an unacceptable breach of a trusted responsibility,” the company said.

NLRB’s case will be heard in the coming months.

Photo: John Marino/Flickr