Google employees gather at their Mountain View headquarters, calling for job security.

      Shortly after 9am on Thursday, approximately 100 employees of Google gathered outside the company's headquarters in Mountain View, holding placards to advocate for a request that might have once seemed quaint: allowing us to retain our jobs. The rally, orchestrated by the Alphabet Workers Union, concluded with the submission of a petition signed by over 4,500 employees to CEO Sundar Pichai and three senior executives.

      The union, operating as CWA Local 9009, has spent around 18 months developing its Googlers for Job Security campaign, remaining undeterred by previous claims that the company created a surveillance tool to monitor staff involved in union activities. They are not the only workforce resisting, as Meta employees also staged their own protests regarding mouse-tracking before the company's latest round of layoffs.

      The union has four notably specific demands. Employees are requesting guaranteed severance for anyone laid off, with amounts not lower than those offered by Google in January 2023, along with voluntary exit packages available prior to any involuntary layoffs. They also seek the elimination of the company's forced-distribution performance ratings, referred to internally as GRAD quotas, which evaluate employees against a fixed curve instead of solely on merit. A fourth demand would allow employees on visas to take their severance as extended paid leave, giving them time to secure a new sponsor before their immigration status expires.

      These issues did not arise suddenly. The campaign began inside the company in January 2025 with around 400 signatures, grew to 2,000 by the time of a petition delivery in April, and featured a Valentine's Day of Action across 10 offices earlier this year. The context involves three years of workforce reduction. In early 2023, Google laid off about 12,000 employees, approximately 6 percent of its workforce, and has continued to reduce teams in subsequent smaller waves, in line with an industry that has cut tens of thousands of jobs since 2022.

      Much of the current concern centers on how AI could redefine work rather than any particular announced layoffs. This anxiety extends beyond a single campus, as recent rulings in China determined that AI replacements do not constitute lawful grounds for dismissal, a topic barely explored in Western labor law.

      Meta's latest round of layoffs, which the union estimates at about 8,000 jobs, has energized the movement. The AWU-CWA executive board has already encouraged tech employees to organize, contending that the products generating significant profits could not exist without their work.

      Parul Koul, a Google engineer and the union's president, addressed the gathering on the well-kept lawns of the Googleplex, positioning the rally as a battle over working conditions as much as job numbers, and portraying the campaign as a long-term effort rather than a mere protest.

      The appeal to coworkers focuses less on outright opposition to AI and more on who bears its costs. The rationale is that a guaranteed severance minimum provides individuals the security to take creative risks amidst uncertainty in their jobs.

      Google did not promptly respond to a request for comment, and none of the four executives named in the petition seemed to receive it personally. Nevertheless, the company has expanded voluntary exit packages to over 70,000 employees across various divisions since the campaign's inception, a move that sets it apart from other major platforms and which the union views as a partial validation of their ongoing pressure.

      Whether Thursday's actions will lead to policy changes remains unclear, as the industry invests billions in automation while often treating worker retraining as a secondary concern. More than 1,000 Googlers have participated in visibility actions since the campaign started, and hundreds have submitted photographs explaining their reasons for signing.

      For now, the signatures rest on Pichai's desk, and the union hopes that 4,500 signatures will be tougher to overlook than an individual walkout. “We are demanding that Google workers have the conditions and the security to do their best work," Koul stated, “where they can truly bring new ideas and innovations to life instead of functioning in an environment driven by fear.”