Kathryn Spiers
Kathryn Spiers.
- Google has fired an engineer who built a tool that notified employees of their labor rights when they visited certain websites.
- Kathryn Spiers modified a security tool to display additional notifications, and was dismissed last week.
- With the help of the CWA union, she has filed a charge with the NLRB alleging Google illegally fired her for engaging in protected activity.
- Google said she "abused privileged access to modify an internal security tool," calling her actions "a serious violation." The firm said it did not fire her for trying to inform colleagues of their rights.
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A former Google engineer has filed a complaint against her former employer with the National Labor Review Board (NLRB) after being terminated for building a tool that automatically reminded other Google employees of their rights when they visited certain websites.
Kathryn Spiers, a former security engineer at the California search giant, had modified a feature in the employee-only version of web browser Chrome, that displayed a pop-up notification telling employees that they "have the right to participate in protected concerted activities" when they visited the website of a labor consulting firm hired by Google and some other websites.
The tool was originally designed to present Google employees with security-related notifications as they browse the web, and Google suspended Spiers within hours of her change. She was subsequently fired over what the company says is a violation of its company policy.
On Monday, The Communication Workers of America union filed a charge with the NLRB, a US federal agency overseeing labor issues, alleging that Spiers' dismissal was illegal retaliation for was engaging in protected activity, according to a copy of the complaint shared with Business Insider.
In a statement, a Google spokesperson defended the firing: "We dismissed an employee who abused privileged access to modify an internal security tool. This was a serious violation."
Google has been wracked with labor issues for months, with activist employees staging protests and walkouts over numerous issues, from payouts made to executives accused of sexual harassment to the company's now-shelved plans to build a censored search engine to operate in China.
In November, it fired four employees - who have become known as the "Thanksgiving Four" - for what it said were violations of its data security policies. They claim they were retaliated against for trying to organise workers.
In an interview, Spiers said she believed she was also retaliated against for trying to inform Google employees of their rights.
Google has denied this, and said the issue wasn't Spiers' messaging but the fact she altered a privacy and security tool without permission.
Google reached a settlement with the NLRB in September 2019, following a complaint last year from another employee. One of the requirements of the settlement was that Google share with employees a list of their rights. "Google is a non-traditional company ... posting a notice in the cafeteria isn't an effective way of notifying vast amounts of our organisation" about their rights, Spiers said of the notification tool she created.
"I think I was participating in protected concerted activity, and I think I'm being retaliated against for my labour organising," she said. "And then it is worth noting that in ... the course of events, they fired five people for organising. And three of us have been trans women. That is not representative of Google's population as a whole. It is not representative of the organisers of Google, it is statistically significant."
Spiers, alongside other employees, also worked on a tool that notified top Google lawyer Kent Walker whenever a user accessed any internal documents, in a protest against greater restrictions on what employees at the historically famously open company can access. The existence of the tool was first reported by Bloomberg last week.
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