Amid rising investment in artificial intelligence and continued workforce reductions, thousands of Google employees have intensified their demands for stronger job security. A petition signed by more than 4,500 employees has been delivered to Google CEO Sundar Pichai and three other senior executives, urging the company to introduce voluntary buyout options before mandatory layoffs, improve severance benefits, and reform its performance evaluation system.
A Petition That Doubled in Size Over a Year
The petition was organised by the Alphabet Workers Union, which argues Google continues to post record financial results while steadily shrinking its workforce. Union President and Google software engineer Parul Koul said the company’s market valuation has nearly quadrupled over the past six years to around $4 trillion, and that ongoing layoffs reflect a prioritisation of profits over the employees who helped build that success. Speaking at a demonstration outside Google’s Mountain View headquarters, Koul said workers are demanding the conditions and security to do their best work, rather than operating in an environment driven by fear, where colleagues are pitted against each other and no one is certain how much longer their job will last.
The union first attempted to deliver the petition to Pichai roughly a year ago with around 1,300 signatures, and after receiving no substantive response, continued collecting names before returning this week with more than three times as many. Nearly 100 employees gathered on the Mountain View campus for the delivery, many wearing matching black shirts and unfurling a long banner covered with signatories’ names. The group first visited the offices of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian and senior vice presidents Rick Osterloh and Nick Fox, before proceeding to Pichai’s office, where none of the executives were present to receive the document in person, and employees ultimately slipped the petition under the doors.
What Employees Are Asking For
In the petition, employees requested that voluntary buyout options be offered across all product divisions before any compulsory layoffs are implemented, alongside the option to receive severance in the form of extended paid leave rather than a lump sum alone. Workers also criticised Google’s current performance evaluation system, alleging it operates on fixed quotas rather than individual merit, meaning employees can be marked for exit regardless of their actual performance simply to satisfy a predetermined distribution.
The union noted that Google has offered voluntary exit packages to more than 70,000 workers across several rounds since the campaign began, though Koul clarified that figure reflects the number of employees eligible for such offers, not the number who actually accepted them, a distinction the union says understates how much uncertainty remains embedded in the current process. Speakers at the protest described a workplace visibly reshaped by repeated rounds of layoffs, with one Google software engineer, Nobel Barakat, saying he sees worried colleagues, grateful simply to still have a job, doing everything they can just to hold onto it.
Part of a Wider Industry Pattern
Google is far from alone in facing employee pushback over AI-linked restructuring. Meta recently sent layoff notices to roughly 8,000 employees as part of a 10 percent staff reduction tied to AI-driven changes, and separate Meta employees have filed a lawsuit alleging AI-powered tools were used to identify workers for large-scale layoffs, allegations Meta has firmly rejected as without factual basis. Oracle, Microsoft and Block have similarly announced significant workforce reductions over the past year, with some of these companies publicly acknowledging that AI-enabled operational efficiencies and broader restructuring have influenced their staffing decisions.
Recently installed Alphabet CFO Anat Ashkenazi has said driving further cost discipline remains one of her top priorities as the company continues expanding its AI spending through 2025 and beyond, a framing that sits uneasily alongside Alphabet’s own record financial performance and its stock trading near all-time highs. Alphabet has identified AI as a key strategic investment area in its latest earnings report and says it intends to keep hiring and investing in the space, though the company has not confirmed whether AI adoption has directly contributed to its recent rounds of layoffs.
Prof. Triveni Singh, the former IPS officer, said the rapid expansion of AI is fundamentally reshaping the global workforce, and that organisations should balance AI adoption with transparent human resource policies, employee reskilling and stronger employment safeguards to ensure technological transformation does not translate into unnecessary social and economic disruption.
