Another Google LLC employee has been let go from the company, and like more before her, she claims it was because of her internal activism.

In post on Medium published today, security engineer Kathryn Spiers said that during her almost two years at Google, she had received excellent performance reviews and only two months ago had been given a promotion. She was then let go.

Spiers explained that part of her job consisted of writing browser notifications that would pop up as Googlers surfed the web, notifying staff of employee guidelines and company policies. She also wrote notifications that would discourage employees from mishandling data.

“Recently Google was forced to post a list of rights that we have in the workplace,” she said. “So when I heard that Google had hired a union busting firm and started illegally retaliating against my coworkers, I decided to make sure that my coworkers knew about the posting.”

What that meant is that if employees visited a website related to the union busters’ website or looked at policies concerning activism, they would receive a pop-up that read, “Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities.”

“Google’s response to this was to suspend me immediately and without warning,” she said. “This was the week of Thanksgiving, the same day they fired the Thanksgiving Four.” She was referring to the four engineers who were let go, after which they filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board stating that they had been fired for defending their rights.

Spiers said she faced draconian investigations and was asked if she had intentions of disrupting the workplace. “The interrogations were extremely aggressive and illegal,” she said. “They wouldn’t let me consult with anyone, including a lawyer, and relentlessly pressured me to incriminate myself and any coworkers I had talked to about exercising my rights at work.”

She said she was subsequently fired for violating Google’s security policies, which “stunned” her given that she had received so much praise for her work.

Google told The Verge that someone had been fired for misusing the browser notification feature, but that it wasn’t the content of the message that was at fault, rather that it was not related to security. “We dismissed an employee who abused privileged access to modify an internal security tool,” the spokesperson said. “This was a serious violation.”

Photo: John Mrino/Flickr