Google workers demand job security at Mountain View HQ

About 100 Google workers gathered outside the company’s Mountain View headquarters just after 9am on Thursday, urging management to provide stronger job protections as layoffs and AI-driven disruption continue to rattle the tech industry.

The rally was organized by the Alphabet Workers Union, which operates as CWA Local 9009, and ended with a petition signed by more than 4,500 staff being delivered to CEO Sundar Pichai and three other senior leaders. The campaign, Googlers for Job Security, has been running for roughly 18 months. It continued despite earlier allegations that Google built a surveillance tool to monitor unionizing staff. The push comes as other tech workers have also protested workplace policies, including Meta employees who previously demonstrated over mouse-tracking ahead of that company’s latest cuts.

The union’s demands are unusually specific. It wants:

• Guaranteed severance for laid-off employees, with packages no lower than those Google offered in January 2023
• Voluntary exit packages before any involuntary layoffs
• An end to forced-distribution performance ratings, known internally as GRAD quotas
• The option for workers on visas to take severance as extended paid leave so they have more time to find a new sponsor

The campaign began inside Google in January 2025 with about 400 signatures, reached 2,000 by a petition delivery in April, and included a Valentine’s Day of Action across 10 offices earlier this year. The backdrop is a long contraction: Google cut about 12,000 jobs in early 2023, roughly 6% of its workforce, and has continued trimming teams in smaller waves since then.

Much of the anxiety now centers less on one announced layoff than on how AI could reshape jobs. The article notes that courts in China recently ruled that AI replacement is not lawful grounds for dismissal, while Western labor law has barely started to address that question. Meta’s latest round of cuts, which the union puts at around 8,000 jobs, also helped galvanize organizing.

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Parul Koul, a Google engineer and president of the union, told workers the fight is about both job counts and working conditions.

“We are demanding that Google workers have the conditions and the security to do their best work, where they can actually bring new ideas and innovations to life instead of working in an environment driven by fear.”

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and none of the four executives named on the petition appeared to receive it in person. Still, the company has extended voluntary exit packages to more than 70,000 staff across several divisions since the campaign began — something the union sees as partial proof that pressure is working.