Google can’t cloak documents, NLRB judge rules!

Google must give over 180 documents relating to an internal operation to combat employee union organizing attempts, according to a judge appointed by the National Labor Relations Board. According to one of the emails, a Google attorney described the ongoing campaign, dubbed Project Vivian, as a strategy to "engage employees more favorably and convince them that unions suck" between 2018 and 2020. The records are part of a complaint filed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against Google in December 2020, alleging that the internet giant broke US labor law by spying on and terminating employees who were organizing rallies and attempting to unionize.

Laurence Berland, a former Google employee who was sacked in 2019, was organizing against the company's employment of IRI Consultants, a business notorious for its anti-union activities. He said he was dismissed for peeking at other employees' schedules, which he claimed he did in violation of a Google regulation that the NLRB deemed to be illegal. Kathryn Spiers, a former Google employee, said she was dismissed after creating a pop-up for Google employees visiting the IRI Consultants website. Spiers was fired when the employer claimed she had broken security standards, but the NLRB concluded that her dismissal was also illegal. Google attempted to use attorney-client privilege to protect some of the papers in the case that were subpoenaed.