Lawsuit Accuses Google of Unlawfully Censoring its Workforce 

An anonymous Google product manager is alleging in a lawsuit that the internet giant unlawfully censors current and former employees by imposing sweeping confidentiality policies that deter whistleblowing.

The lawsuit was filed this week by a California labor law firm in San Francisco county court on behalf of a Google employee referred to as John Doe.

John Doe’s suit alleges:

The policies prohibit Googlers from telling a potential employer how much money they make, or what work they performed, when searching for a different job. The policies prohibit Googlers from using or disclosing all of the skills, knowledge, acquaintances, and overall experience at Google when working for a new employer. The policies prohibit Googlers from speaking to the government, attorneys, or the press about wrongdoing at Google. The policies even prohibit Googlers from speaking to their spouse or friends about whether they think their boss could do a better job.

A Google spokesperson called the claims baseless.

“Transparency is a huge part of our culture,” the company spokesman said. “Our employee confidentiality requirements are designed to protect proprietary business information, while not preventing employees from disclosing information about terms and conditions of employment, or workplace concerns.”

The complaint says it was spurred by a company-wide email sent by Google’s global security chief that allegedly suggested John Doe leaked information to the press and was fired as a result.

“John Doe” denies being the leaker but alleges that Google used the plaintiff “as a very public scapegoat to ensure that other Googlers continued to comply with Google’s unlawful confidentiality policies.”

Those policies, according to the complaint, include a training program that instructs employees never to send an email that says, “I think we broke the law’” or “I think we violated this contract” and warns them against “communicating to other Googlers that a Google product may dangerous.”

“Google’s Employee Communication Policy,” the complaint also states, “prohibits employees from writing ‘a novel about someone working at a tech company in Silicon Valley’ unless Google gives prior approval to both the book idea and the final draft.”

The suit was brought under a California labor law that allows aggrieved employees to essentially deputize themselves as enforcers of the state labor code.

California’s Private Attorneys General Act permits employees to sue on behalf of other employees, and, like the federal False Claims Act, allows employees to collect a portion of any award recovered in the litigation.

The law provides a civil penalty of $100 for each aggrieved employee per pay period. John Doe is suing on behalf of thousands of employees. So by the plaintiff’s calculation, the penalties sought are tens of millions of dollars.

The tech-news website the Information, which first reported on the suit, said the plaintiff is a former employee of Nest, a home-automation firm owned by Google parent Alphabet, and is the same person who filed a similar complaint against Google in May with the National Labor Relations Board. The employee was fired for complaining about former Nest chief Tony Fadell in Facebook posts, according to the Information.

It’s not unusual for a company to restrict employees from talking to the press.

A blanket ban on contact with the media could potentially be unlawful, says Michael Rubin, a California employment law litigator who isn’t involved in the case. But he told Law Blog he’s not sure that the claims outlined in the complaint make clear that Google’s policy on communications with the media was overbroad under the law.

Looking at the complaint, Mr. Rubin said a key question could be how Google enforces its confidentiality rules. It’s one thing, he said, for an employer to order its workers not to send emails saying the company broke the law. But he said that doesn’t mean the company actually punished lawful whistleblowing. Short of that evidence, a plaintiff could try to argue that a company’s confidentiality policies had a chilling effect on exposing any corporate wrongdoing, said Mr. Rubin.

Source: WSJ

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