Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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.
Have you ever actually tried to USE one of the ethics hotlines?
I did once. About a year after ethics training. The hotline had been disconnected and no longer existed. It no longer appeared in the company directory. I figured the training and hotline were setup as part of a court settlement and that once the terms had been fulfilled, it was all dismantled.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.