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Google Employee Sues For $3.8 Billion Over Confidentiality Policies (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A Google product manager has filed a lawsuit against the company for its confidentiality policies on the grounds they violate California labor laws. California labor laws give employees the right to discuss workplace issues with law enforcement, regulators, the media, and other employees. Google is accused of firing the employee for exercising his rights, then smearing his reputation in an internal email sent to the rest of the company. These policies are put in place to allegedly prevent the leaking of potentially damaging information to regulators or law enforcement. They in turn prohibit employees from speaking out about illegal activity within the company, even to its own lawyers, and encourage them to report other employees suspected of leaking information. The Verge has obtained a copy of the complaint, linked below in full. "Google's motto is 'don't be evil.' Google's illegal confidentiality agreements and policies fail this test," the lawsuit reads. One policy allegedly even prevents employees from writing a novel about working for a large Silicon Valley corporation -- like, for instance, Dave Eggers' dystopian novel, The Circle -- without first getting final draft approval from Google. The Information confirmed that this lawsuit was filed by the same individual, known in the suit only as "John Doe," who filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board earlier this year over many of the same confidentiality policies.
My thoughts exactly. He doesn't deserve a cent over $3.4 billion.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
thats the tip of the iceberg. If this gets overturned as illegal you will see other tech companies subjected to the same types of complaints and more importantly, a flood of potential information about the real shenanigans going on and the true level of privacy violations they commit in the course of business.
No one really wants the to illicitly gain access to these companies' metaphorical secret sauces recipies, we just want to make sure the ingredient list doesn't include rat poison.
Most large companies now have an ethics/goverance contact for exactly this reason: giving an employees an outlet to safely report shady stuff without recrimination, along with a mandatory annual ethics training video. If Google has something like this, they're probably OK and this is just a whiny employee. If not, well then, they will after this lawsuit. (Not getting sued by whistleblowers is largely a solved problem in corporate America: they report, get paid off, and life goes on after some non-public changes.)
If he had sued for his actual damages (if there were, in fact, any) of more like $38,000, The Information, The Verge, and The /. wouldn't have run the story. He probably figured that the more plublicity, the more money he is likely to get and/or the more likely Google is to alter their policies. Doesn't seem so stupid to me.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
RTFA, that's a headline madness. He is not suing for 3.8 Billion, he is suing for up to $14,600 per employee, per the law. Times 61000 employees, that's 3.8 billion total distributed among the employees. Makes perfect sense.
Maybe they did cause harm to this person. I don't know. But even so, there's no way they caused 3.8 billion dollars of harm. What is this idiot smoking?
Basically, the lawyer is suing on behalf of everyone. According to the lawsuit (paragraph 98 and 99)
98. Under the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), the penalty for a violation of Labor Code S1102.5 is both $10,000 per violation and "one hundred dollars ($100) for each aggrieved employee per period for the initial violation and two hundred ($200) for each aggrieved employee per pay period for each subsequent violation."
99. Plaintiff seeks, on behalf of himself, the state of California, and all of Google's aggrieved employees, PAGA penalties as set forth above for each employee per pay period within the statutory time frame,
So when you multiply that by 65K employees, that's about $3.8B (according to statutory laws). It took the law firm of Baker Curtis & Schwartz to come up with a lawsuit that "yuge"...
No, this is called Punitive Damages
Sounds like he wants to get everyone the Christmas bonus Google decided to deny them this year.
Ho-Ho-Ho!
Considering Google apparently made 75 Billion in profits last year, 3.8 Billion hardly seems all that "yuge" when taken into perspective.
Also I'm not sure what writing novels and all the rest is about, but the last time I heard about Google and confidentiality was all about unfair wages and employees sharing information about what they make with each other to get a better idea of how much money they should be making in relation to everyone else.
Seeing as the work produced by said employees profited almost 75 Billion, the lawsuit is for 3.8 Billion, and this is probably about employee wages, it doesn't seem all that unjustified. In fact, without having a valuation that large it would probably be hard to be taken seriously by corporate at all without being ignored or simply just spending who cares how much throwing lawyers at the problem. Even at 3.8 Billion, at almost 1.5B a week, Google could pay off that amount in just over 2 weeks...
My guess is that someone was fired for cause...
Obviously he was fired for cause. The cause is violating company policies. He's going to court to challenge the legality of those policies, and therefore the quoted cause for his firing.
I wouldn't be surprised if he wins. Every company in America has written policies that are illegal at least a little bit. They're almost never challenged. Choosing a California company to challenge is probably an easier win than most, since California still has some worker protection laws on the books.
California law seems a little more unusual than I realized. Apparently he's suing on behalf of all Google employees, as well as himself, without getting class action status. I didn't know that was possible. (And possibly it's not.) More likely he'll get the $14,600 statutory award and Google will be ordered to change their policies. And they won't.
$640,000,000,000 ought to be enough for everybody!
I would normally agree, but if they fire you and then send out an email to everyone telling you how bad you were (and you feel that that's a lie), then that's crossing the line. The industry is pretty small, you're bound to run into many of those people again in later jobs, and the bad reputation of you they are creating can have a real impact down the road.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
I would normally agree, but if they fire you and then send out an email to everyone telling you how bad you were (and you feel that that's a lie), then that's crossing the line. The industry is pretty small, you're bound to run into many of those people again in later jobs, and the bad reputation of you they are creating can have a real impact down the road.
Quite true. Smearing your professional reputation is actual damages. But also realize that personnel matters are legally confidential and sending out an at-large critique of the employee is a clear violation of employment law. Your employment file is not a black-mail dossier for the company to use as it sees fit. There should be heavy penalties for this, on top of considerable actual damages. Only a hit that noticeably dents the bottom line of a corporation will get its attention.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
I think you meant $640,000
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
The number is correct... I had to take into account inflation, ad-ware fees, ransom overhead, and larger software updates! ;)