Josh Edelson | AFP | beautiful pictures
Google Employees are receiving regular notifications from management about the spread of Covid-19, leading some to question the company’s mandate to return to the office.
Employees who spoke to CNBC on condition of anonymity said that since they were asked to return to the office, infection notifications have popped up in their email inboxes regularly. Staff are reacting with frustration and memes.
The company began requiring most employees to return to physical offices at least three days a week in April. Since then, employees have push back on duty after they have been productive for so long at home while the company enjoys some fastest revenue growth for 15 years. Google has given full-time employees the option to request permanent remote work, but it’s unclear how many employees have been approved.
Google’s Covid-19 outbreak in Los Angeles is currently the largest outbreak of any employer in LA., according to the city’s public health dashboard. First Deadline.com report that the tech giant’s fashion Silicon Beach Campus VeniceCalifornia, has recorded 145 infections while 135 cases are recorded at the major company Playa Vista campus.
A Google spokesperson told CNBC, “There has been no significant increase in local transmission of COVID-19 in our facilities. The numbers reported in Playa Vista and Venice reflect the total number of schools. cases in the past few months, not current or active cases.”
Employees filled Memegen, the company’s internal photo-sharing website, with memes about the growing number of display notifications they received. One meme, upvoted 2,840 times, shows an inbox snapshot in the subject of an email from a San Francisco-based facility manager saying “We’re so excited to see you back in the office.” !” and the email subject line followed by “Notification of Confirmed COVID-19 Case.”
Another meme with hundreds of upvotes said “How It Started” with an image of a rainbow arch, followed by “How it came to be” and a wall of text saying “Announcement about confirmed Covid-19 case.” Another photo depicts a Pokemon happily touring the Bay Area campus alongside another photo of a worried Pokemon after receiving a Covid-19 notification, followed by a Pokemon alerted with 29 exposure notification. Another meme shows an image of the Star Wars character Rey, with the caption saying “I didn’t know there were so many ‘Notices of Confirmed COVID-19 Cases’ in the whole world. set of galaxies.”
Some employees said they’ve received a spike in notifications from its Mountain View, California headquarters and at its San Francisco offices after the company organized the event. back to office celebrationwhere Grammy Award-winning artist Lizzo performed for thousands of employees at the Shoreline Amphitheater, near the main Google campus.
A Google spokesperson also noted that the company follows the methodology set forth by state and local law in determining the definition of a Covid outbreak and when to send contact emails.
Staff members are not vaccinated against combat to return to the office
Last December, Google told employees that they had to comply with vaccine policies, or they would face loss of pay and subsequently job losses. Then in February, before asking the employee to return, it comfortable rules around vaccines as a requirement for employment, as well as other rules around testing, social distancing and face masks.
But it continues to require Covid-19 vaccinations to enter physical offices.
Now, some Google employees are demanding that the company abandon its vaccination mission, arguing that Covid-19 outbreaks continue to occur in offices where employees are fully vaccinated. While it still offers some level of protection, the vaccine is not as potent as the highly transmissible variant BA.5, the fastest-spreading variant of Covid-19 to date, the team argued in a statement. manifesto entitled “No Vaccination Duty”. was posted this month and seen by CNBC. (Vaccines are still providing good protection against severe illness and death, including variant BA.5, but do not provide significant protection against infection or mild illness.)
The statement of anonymity said the group, which calls themselves Googlers for the No Vaccination Committee, is disappointed that employees who are not vaccinated and who refuse to report their immunization status are still banned. to the office and other gatherings including off-site, summits and group events. It also claims that some Google employees have yet to meet their team as of March 2020, and some have never been informed of the vaccination policy during their hiring process.
“We have seen waves of Covid, especially since December 2021 with Omicron and its sub-variants spreading through Google offices with little regard for vaccination status. We have seen many colleagues fully immunized and given a health boost called sick for days with Covid. We have seen both panic and good response to the flood of exposure notifications received by office workers. “
Other companies that once mandated Covid vaccination requirements have since waived them, including Boeing, Inteland United Airlines, citing a federal court decision prohibiting enforcement of federal contractor operating orders requiring vaccinations for large employers who are also government contractors. The group’s manifesto says it hopes Google’s leadership does the same.
The group is largely anonymous, although the identities of some of its members have been known to CNBC. It claims to include hundreds of employees with tenures up to 10 years, in roles such as engineering, program management, UX design, education, sales, marketing and finance. It also includes Google employees who are fully vaccinated and “believe the company’s vaccine policy is an invasion of privacy and insensitive to individual circumstances and risk factors.”
“We are writing to ask for your help for a group of Googlers who are still not allowed back into our offices,” the memo states. has been omitted. When planning an in-person, summit, or off-site meeting, think about how Googlers who are barred from full participation by the vaccine policy can be acknowledged and included. “
