Staff solidarity | Google workers walk out and offer to take pay cuts amid layoffs

Hundreds of employees at Google’s Zurich office staged a walkout in response to another influx of layoffs in Big Tech. The workers, who are a part of the IT union Syndicom, walked out after 200 employees were laid off.

There have been mass layoffs across the tech sector in recent months, with over 120,000 workers losing their jobs at some of the world’s largest tech companies including Meta, Netflix, Amazon, and Google’s parent company Alphabet.

Reasons for the layoffs are varied, but many attribute the cuts to increased economic strain and the necessity to let go of resources once needed during the pandemic tech boom.

Syndicom is demanding, on behalf of its members, that Google provides an adequate social plan for dismissed employees in the wake of unavoidable redundancies. The Swiss IT union has pointed to the fact that many of Google Zurich’s workers are non-EU nationals whose right to live in the country would run out once laid off.