Google employees delivered a petition with more than 4,500 signatures to Sundar Pichai's office Thursday, demanding layoff protections at a company whose valuation has quadrupled to $4 trillion in six years while it simultaneously cuts staff and pours billions into artificial intelligence.
The Alphabet Workers Union, led by software engineer Parul Koul, framed the request as a rebuttal to the narrative that job cuts are unavoidable. "These layoffs and cuts are not difficult decisions, but simply profit being put over the people that make this company run," Koul said outside the California headquarters. The petition asks for guaranteed severance, voluntary buyouts before any mandatory reductions across all product areas, and the option to take severance as extended paid leave. It also targets a performance-rating system the union says rewards quota-hitting over merit.
Google's response was silence. Workers were met with closed doors and left the document with a staffer who promised to pass it along. Koul called it the largest single piece of employee feedback on job security the company has ever received. The backdrop is a pattern: Google Cloud quietly shed staff about two months ago, and last summer the company eliminated more than a third of its managers overseeing small teams, according to reports from Business Insider and CNBC.
On the same earnings call where CFO Anat Ashkenazi labeled AI a "key investment area" and pledged continued hiring and marketing spend, the company offered no explanation for the disconnect. The DeepMind chief previously told Wired that firms trying to replace developers with AI "have a lack of imagination." Google declined to comment on whether AI has driven its own layoffs.
The petition lands amid a broader Silicon Valley reckoning. Meta faces a lawsuit alleging AI tools flagged workers for layoffs after they requested protected leave or disability accommodations; the company denies the claims. Oracle disclosed roughly 21,000 cuts over the past year and warned in its annual report that AI adoption "may continue to result in reductions to our workforce." Block shed nearly half its staff, about 4,000 people, with Jack Dorsey citing AI-driven efficiency. Microsoft plans to cut 2.1% of its workforce, roughly 4,800 roles concentrated in Xbox, while ramping AI investment.
The union already won voluntary exit packages for more than 70,000 workers in a prior campaign. This petition tries to close the gap between that victory and the reality of ongoing involuntary cuts. Whether Pichai treats it as a negotiation or a nuisance will signal how much leverage labor still holds inside a company that prints money while telling the people who built it to wait their turn.