Alphabet Workers Union led more than 100 Google employees in a rally at the company’s Mountain View headquarters, handing CEO Sundar Pichai and three other senior executives a 4,500-signature petition for stronger job protections. Petition demands include guaranteed payouts for anyone cut, a chance to leave voluntarily before forced layoffs, scrapping forced-distribution performance ratings, and letting workers convert severance into extended paid leave. Union first circulated the petition in early 2025 and got no substantive response, reviving it now amid deepening tech-layoff fears. Google cut 12,000 roles in 2023 and made smaller cuts since, while Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft have shed tens of thousands of positions since 2022, and the union represents about 1,400 members against Alphabet’s nearly 191,000 employees.
