A former Google engineer who got sacked last year claims he was fired for expressing his conservative viewpoints. He has filed complaints against the tech giant with the National Labor Relations Board, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Soon after Kevin Cernekee from the Chicago area started as a newbie in 2015, he noticed irritation, sarcasm, and even repression from his supervisors as soon as he posted politically charged remarks on the internal messaging board.
A first incident arose back in 2015 when some of Cernekee’s remarks were deemed inconsiderate and disobedient. As a result, a senior manager blacklisted him as someone he wouldn’t work with.
For over three years, 41-year-old Cernekee kept struggling for an open and transparent corporate culture and fair treatment of conservative employees at Google’s headquarters at Mountain View in left-leaning silicon valley, California. It turned out to be an impossible mission.
“Can’t we just fire the poisonous [expletive] already?” another manager publicly asked, referring to right-wingers within the organization on a bulletin board in 2017.
In June 2018, Cernekee was fired. Officially, because he allegedly breached Google’s remote access policies. Something he vehemently denies. Cenekee feels he is being ridiculed, bullied, discriminated upon, and thwarted in his efforts to gain fair treatment.
“Historically, there’s been a lot of bullying at Google. There’s a big political angle, and they treat the two sides very differently,” he said.
However, Jenn Kaiser, a Google spokeswoman in a statement to the newspaper said, “We enforce our workplace policies without regard to political viewpoint. Lively debate is a hallmark of Google’s workplace culture,” she added.
Republican engineer fired by Google slams tech giant over alleged ‘bullying’ of conservatives: reporthttps://t.co/sfDk5VN8rZ
— Ron Rostker (@rjrostker) August 1, 2019
In one of his posts, Cernekee stated that “many Googlers strongly disagree with Social Justice theory and even more Googlers are concerned about the ‘internet mob’ shaming and intimidation tactics employed in support of this agenda.” The reply he got from the HR executive read, “Many Googlers were offended by your comments.”
Cernekee also referenced another employee, James Damore, who experienced similar backlash after he expressed some ideas that were opposed to the mainstream view of the corporation. His story was covered last year by The Epoch Times.
Ex-Google Engineer Claims Anti-Conservative Discrimination in Lawsuit
James Damore, who was fired in 2017 in the aftermath of the controversial memo, brought forward the class action lawsuit on Jan. 8, the Guardian reported.
According to the lawsuit, “Google employees who expressed views deviating from the majority view at Google on political subjects raised in the workplace and relevant to Google’s employment policies and its business, such as ‘diversity’ hiring policies, ‘bias sensitivity,’ or ‘social justice’ were/are singled out, mistreated, and systematically punished and terminated from Google, in violation of their legal rights.”
Another former Google engineer, David Gudeman, is also a member of the suit, according to the complaint filed in Santa Clara Superior Court in northern California.
Today, former Google engineer James Damore filed a lawsuit against Google for discriminating against whites, males, and conservatives https://t.co/Y0HYn9R0UZ
— WIRED (@WIRED) January 9, 2018
“Damore, Gudeman, and other class members were ostracized, belittled, and punished for their heterodox political views, and for the added sin of their birth circumstances of being Caucasians and/or males,” the suit says.
Damore was sacked last August in the wake of his contentious 10-page memo, published in full on Gizmodo, and has been unemployed ever since.
Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai denounced the memo for “advancing harmful gender stereotypes.” The company told the Los Angeles Times that it fired Damore for violating its code of conduct.
Epoch Times reporter Tom Ozimek contributed to this report
