Google employees have made headlines in recent months for coordinating internal campaigns against "evil" corporate projects such as their work on China's "Dragonfly" data-collection search engine, and a secret military drone AI project that at least a dozen employees quit over. 

The AI drone work - dubbed Project Maven, used machine learning to identify vehicles and other objects from drone footage with the ultimate goal of enabling the automated detection and identification of objects in up to 38 categories - including the ability to track individuals as they come and go from different locations.

As a result of massive backlash coordinated over Google's internal communications systems - including petitions signed by thousands of employees, Google's work on Project Maven and Dragonfly were halted. 

And while Google publicly said it supported employees who protested company policies, we now learn that the company worked in secret against them - urging the Trump administration's National Labor Relations Board to repeal an Obama-era restriction on punishing employees that use workplace email systems to coordinate protests, according to Bloomberg. 

During the Obama administration, the National Labor Relations Board broadened employees’ rights to use their workplace email system to organize around issues on the job. In a 2014 case, Purple Communications, the agency restricted companies from punishing employees for using their workplace email systems for activities like circulating petitions or fomenting walkouts, as well as trying to form a union. In filings in May 2017 and November 2018, obtained via Freedom of Information Act request, Alphabet Inc.’s Google urged the National Labor Relations Board to undo that precedent.

Citing dissents authored by Republican appointees, Google’s attorneys wrote that the 2014 standard “should be overruled” and a George W. Bush-era precedent—allowing companies to ban organizing on their employee email systems—should be reinstated.

In an emailed statement, a Google spokeswoman said, "We're not lobbying for changes to any rules." Rather, she said, Google's claim that the Obama-era protections should be overturned was "a legal defense that we included as one of many possible defenses" against meritless claims at the NLRB. -Bloomberg

According to Google employee and activist Colin McMillen (whose last day with the company is next month), if the Labor board acquiessed to Google's request, "it would have a huge chilling effect." McMillen was one of tens of thousands of employees who participated in a worldwide walkout in November after the New York Times reported that the company paid a $90 million exit package to Android mobile software creator, Andy Rubin, despite sacking 48 people over sexual harassment claims over the last 24 months. 

The Times report claimed that Rubin coerced a woman into performing oral sex in a hotel room in 2013, and granted his severance package in 2014 after the allegations came to light.

Three weeks after the November walkout, Google attorneys made their latest filing with the Labor Board to undo the 2014 precedent which protected workers organizing over corporate networks. 

Google's employee email system played a pivotal role in organizing the walkout according to McMillen, who added that company email is key to facilitating workers' ability to mobilize. 

"It demonstrates that Google leadership is not operating in good faith," McMillen said of Google's secret efforts to clamp down on employees who wish to organize. "They can have a town hall and try to say soothing words and get people to not want to quit, but then if in the background they’re not just rejecting carrying out most of the demands of the walkout, but also trying to tamp down our ability to even coordinate and talk to each other about these issues, that’s extremely concerning."

Google's appeal to the feds flies in the face of their long standing culture of encouraging employee feedback - including open debate in meetings as well as online forums, in which feedback is carefully considered in how the company moves forward. That said, the company has faced an unprecedented wave of "concentrated and forceful advocacy from employees," writes Bloomberg, "often at direct odds with the positions of management." 

"In an email to all of Google, Sundar assured us that he and Google's leadership supported the walkout. But the company's requests to the National Labor Relations Board tell a different story," wrote organizers of the November walkout in a statement. "If these protections are rolled back, Google will be complicit in limiting the rights of working people across the United States, not just us." 

A corporate spokeswoman hit back, claiming "Google is one of the most open workplaces in the world," adding "Employees have multiple internal forums to express their views, raise concerns and connect, including thousands of internal communities and tens of thousands of email groups," a statement which failed to address the Labor Board filings. 

Google's objections to the legal protection for employees organizing via employee email came in filings defending itself against allegations brought by a regional director of the NLRB. In a 2017 complaint, the agency had accused Google of violating federal labor law, including by maintaining workplace policies that infringe on workers’ rights and by making threats against employees. The complaint also alleged that Google violated the law in 2015 by issuing a warning to an employee because of comments made via email and on the company forum G+ “regarding workplace diversity and social justice initiatives, workplace policy viewpoints, and regarding employees’ rights to express their opinion on G+ .”

The name of the employee who was disciplined is redacted in the documents produced via FOIA. His attorney, Noah Peters, said that the employee declined to comment or to identify himself. Peters said that his client was punished by Google for dissenting from the company's "very, very left-wing office culture" and for sticking up for co-workers who didn't conform to the "tribal" political correctness there. Chris Baker, an attorney representing another worker whose claims against Google are part of the same NLRB case, declined to comment. “This case is without merit and we are defending the claim vigorously," Google's spokeswoman said. -Bloomberg

Google deines the NLRB's allegations of improperly punishing the employee, telling the agency that the employee it disciplined had committed misconduct that "interfered with Google’s lawful interest in maintaining an inclusive workplace for women and minorities that is free of unlawful bias, discrimination, and harassment."

In 2017, Google fired conservative employee James Damore after he published a manifesto criticizing the company's diversity policies. After Damore filed a complaint with the NLRB, an associate general counsel at the agency determined that while much of Damore's essay was probably protected under law, Google was still within its rights to fire him over opinions deemed "so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive," that it fell outside of the Obama-era legal protections for collective action at work.