According to a report by Allum Bokhari of Breitbart News, 600 of Google’s 144,000 employees sent a letter to the company’s management demanding that the tech titan end its vaccine mandate.
This move came after Google’s controversial policy demanding employees upload their vaccine status to its internal systems by December 3, irrespective of whether they work at Google’s offices or remotely.
The letter calls on fellow Google co-workers to “oppose the mandate as a matter of principle.”
The Biden administration recently issued a mandate requiring all companies with over a hundred employees to establish vaccine mandates or regular coronavirus testing for employees by January 4, 2022.
This order has encountered resistance from the courts, as evidenced by the Fifth Circuit blocking the Biden mandate in November. That decision was upheld by a federal appeals court later in November.
Google has maintained its course with the decision, which has spurred significant pushback from hundreds of its employees.
The Daily Mail reported the following: “I believe that [CEO] Sundar’s Vaccine Mandate is deeply flawed,” the manifesto says, describing executives’ leadership as “coercive” and “the antithesis of inclusion.”
The manifesto insists the policy “publicly and possibly embarrassingly exposes” employees’ private choices.
“Such Googlers may never feel comfortable expressing their true sentiments about a company health policy and other, unrelated sensitive topics. This results in silenced perspective and exacerbates the internal ideological ‘echo chamber’ which folks both inside and outside of Google have observed for years,” the authors wrote.
Google is known for having a progressive workforce. The founder of Google’s Open Research group, Meredith Whittaker, a well-known proponent of Critical Race Theory, recently joined the Federal Trade Commission.
Nevertheless, dissenting factions within its workforce have come out publicly against the company’s perceived intolerance of political dissent in recent years.
The protests against its vaccine policy are the latest manifestation of growing unease within Google’s workforce.
According to the New York Times, the chief executive of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, Sundar Pichai said in a memo to employees, “Getting vaccinated is one of the most important ways to keep ourselves and our communities healthy in the months ahead.”
