Fired From Google For Being 'Ungoogley', Temp Worker Files Complaint: Report

Tuesday Carne, who received an email from a Modis manager, which called her behaviour in a November meeting "unacceptable and 'ungoogley'", was subsequently fired.

New Delhi: Tuesday Carne, an Executive Assistant at Integrity Business Solutions Provider who had worked for Google for nine days, was allegedly fired for being "ungoogley", the media has reported.

 

The temp worker at Google is at the centre of a new complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against her employer, Modis, and Alphabet Inc.'s Google, news agency Bloomberg has reported.

 

This marks another workplace dispute for Alphabet (Google), which the world's third-biggest company by market value. 

 

Modis, a unit of Adecco Group AG, is a contract firm that helps Google fill some roles, including Carne's role at a Google site in South Carolina, where she was responsible for equipment maintenance.

 

Carne Spoke Up About A Google Policy

 

Carne said she attended a regular meeting with managers in her second week on the job, where upcoming schedules were discussed, the report stated. She was told that employees who took holiday shifts were entitled to double pay, but there was a catch. The employees were eligible for this policy only if they had worked at the Google site for at least six months beforehand, the report said.

 

Carne was not aware of this policy, and spoke up about it. Quoting her, the report said, "I basically said, 'Thats bulls---'". 

 

According to a copy of the message viewed by the news agency, Carne received an email from a Modis manager that evening, which called her behaviour in the meeting "unacceptable and 'ungoogley'", the report said. She was subsequently fired.

 

Google had settled a different labour complaint from AWU which involved the same South Carolina facility, earlier this year. The company had agreed not to silence workers discussing pay, and Shannon Wait, the fired Modis staffer from the case, was reinstated.

 

AWU said in its new complaint that Carne was exercising legally protected speech during the November meeting, according to the report. AWU is an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America. The labour group has focused on Alphabet's spreading contract workforce. AWU workers have fewer benefits than direct Google staff. According to the report, Carne said she was paid $16.50 an hour in the Modis role, and was given a bonus of $200 during the pandemic. 

 

Rachael Sawyer, an AWU steward, said people like Carne are effectively Google's essential workers, and if anything were to happen to the data centre, Google could not function at all, the report stated.