Google office in New York on February 2, 2023.
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Google is indicating to former employees, who were laid off during maternity and medical leave, that they will not be paid for all of their remaining leave, according to former employees and correspondence. shared with CNBC.
More than 100 former workers have organized a group they call “Paid Leave”. They are asking executives to pay them for the weeks and months in which they were approved for layoff before the announcement of job cuts in January. People who spoke to CNBC said they have been told they will only receive the money until the specified end date, along with standard severance.
The group of former employees sent a letter to the leader, including the CEO Sundar Pichai and Human Resources Manager Fiona Cicconi, on three separate occasions, most recently on March 9, without receiving a response. This group includes people who have been approved or are currently taking maternity leave, maternity leave, care leave, medical leave and personal leave.
Early last year, Google announced that it would increase parental leave time for full-time employees up to 18 weeks for both parents and 24 weeks for biological parents. Cicconi said at the time that the company wanted to offer “special benefits” so employees could “spend more time with their new baby, care for a sick loved one or take care of their health.” their own well-being.”
But Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has since entered the most severe cost-cutting era in nearly two decades of its mass-market presence. The company said in January that it is 12,000 jobs eliminatedaccounts for about 6% of its workforce, as sales growth slowed after a long expansion in the technology sector.
Pichai said employees in the United States will receive 16 weeks of severance pay plus two weeks for each additional year they work at Google. The company also said it will include paid time off when leaving the job.
Those laid off while on medical leave are urging Pichai and other leaders to give immediate clarity on the matter because of an impending deadline: tentative formal severance clauses will arrive shortly after March 31.
The Laid off on Leave team sent its first email to executives in January and shared specific examples of Google employees impacted by job cuts during approved leave. their previous.
One woman said she was fired a week after her maternity leave was approved. Another said she received the notification while on maternity leave, a week before she gave birth.
Some discuss the matter publicly.
“Exactly a week after receiving a text message sharing the exciting news that my maternity leave had been approved, I received a widely circulated email stating that I was among 12,000 people. terminated,” a Google program manager Written On LinkedIn. “Easy target? Maybe.”
Another longtime employee, Kate Howells, post that she had given birth shortly before receiving the notice.
“On January 20, 23 at 7:05 a.m., lying in my hospital bed holding my one-hour-old infant, I learned that I was part of #theGolden12K Googlers who had been fired,” Howells wrote. “I’ve been a Googler for 9.5 years.”
A Google spokesperson told CNBC in an email that soon-to-be laid-off employees are eligible to receive stock and pay during their “60+ day notice period,” reiterating Pichai’s memo. about 16 weeks of pay and an extra two weeks for each year of service.
The company did not address whether it covers the full amount of medical leave in addition to the severance payment.
A spokesperson said: “As we have shared with affected employees, we have evaluated this package to ensure the care we are providing is beneficial compared to other companies, even for Googlers on leave.”
‘Goodwill effort’
Many terminated employees told CNBC that their access to doctors and specialists through Google’s on-site One Medical facility was also cut off on the day of the layoff announcement. They said it interrupted treatment that was going on at the time. A fired senior software engineer said he had lost direct access to his primary care physician for three years.
Some former employees said they were given the option to continue seeing the virtual doctor but were otherwise advised to find a replacement.
The group of laid-off workers highlights the fact that this is happening during Women’s History Month.
“Google is currently demonstrating its workplace commitments and participation in Women’s History Month through various product and service campaigns,” the team wrote in an email to executives. executive of Google. “We agree with you: it’s very important to recognize the difficulties that still disproportionately affect women in the workplace.”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks at a panel at the CEO Summit of the Americas hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce on June 9, 2022 in Los Angeles, California.
Moneymaker Anna | beautiful pictures
They said the company still had a chance to fix the problem.
“We respectfully request a good faith effort to honor the terms of our original parental and/or disability leave agreement for all approved leave since from January 20, 2023,” the group wrote.
At an informal event hosted by the Google Xoogler alumni group in January, more than 50 laid-off employees gathered to comfort each other and seek answers. Kushagra Shrivastava, one of the organizers, told CNBC a story about a mother who said at the event that she “was laid off from her job while taking care of a three-month-old baby, and it was true. hard to hear.”
It’s not just new mothers and those who are about to give birth that find themselves in a bind. The email to management also mentions the challenges faced by pregnant women who have not formally applied for leave and, as such, “will have a longer way to go to secure a new role based on these points.” they’re pregnant.”
At a new employer, those women will have to wait a year for the Family and Medical Leave Act benefits to go into effect, “making it impossible for expectant and new mothers to take advantage of the FMLA that they paid to harm their health and the health of their baby,” the group said. “Parental and medical leave is a particular burden on Google employees’ ability to immediately find new jobs.”
Group letter point at companies like Amazonsaid they would pay the remainder of the leave period other than the severance packages.
Employees who tried to contact Google about the matter said they had lost access to internal systems and were only able to fill out forms on a separate short-term portal. Several people said they received a response a week after requesting, and each said they received what appeared to be an automated response, reminding them of their employment end date or directing them to reapply. for another position.
In an email to CNBC, the group of laid-off workers said Pichai is showing a much greater interest in the company’s efforts to keep up with the pace of the market. The battle for artificial intelligence supremacy rather than to take care of longtime employees in need.
When Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced his dismissal, he mentioned the company’s commitment to AI three times, but never once mentioned Google’s commitment to accessibility. This obviously requires a refocusing of priorities. It’s no surprise that through a messy demo Just a few days after firing us, Google showed that they really don’t lead in AI. However, the good news is that there is still an incredible opportunity to be a leader in accessibility in the treatment of laid-off workers.”
Quality time with baby
The team also reminded Google leadership about the importance of parental rights and the company’s intentions in updating the plan. In particular, it says that parents should have quality time with their babies without the stress of having to think about work and rush back to the office.
“Google has formulated their parent benefits with this in mind, emphasizing that parents need time off to recover and bond with their new babies,” emailed the executives said.
Some said they hoped the matter was negligence and that executives would take corrective action because the company had promised them a certain amount of fully paid time off.
The letter reads: “Granting a payment for all remaining vacation days for scheduled and upcoming vacations would be consistent with Google’s current payment policy for employee accrued time off. member (PTO) in this round of layoffs”.
The team referenced Google’s original core value, “Don’t be evil” to ask management for timely feedback.
“We invite C-Suite to repeat to us the same way Googlers do,” the laid-off workers wrote to CNBC. “
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