Dozens of Google Japan employees have organized under the Tokyo Managers Union. It is the first union in Google Japan, according to the assistant at Meiji University. Professor Ken Yamazaki, who also released a copy of the group’s statements at a press conference. The employees apparently chose to organize out of fear that they might be abruptly laid off, especially since some of them are in Japan on work visas.
Their concerns stemmed from the tech giant’s announcement in January that it will cut 12,000 jobs, or six percent of the company’s total workforce, worldwide. They said their counterparts in the US were fired with just an email sent in the middle of the night, and employees in the Japanese office have been left anxiously waiting for the ax to fall in recent weeks. The workers said they joined a union in response to that announcement and to news about the fate of company employees in other countries.
For a dismissal to be legal in Japan, a company must show that it has reasonable grounds for firing an employee. However, some companies fire employees without a good reason, claiming to have problems with the worker. The group hopes that joining a union will protect them from sudden dismissal. In the US, one of the divisions hardest hit by the job cuts was the company’s in-house Area 120 incubator, which is working on experimental applications and products. The division used to develop 20 projects simultaneously, but has now been reduced to three after most people on the team lost their jobs.
When Google announced it was laying off 12,000 workers, Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said he was “deeply sorry” and took “full responsibility for the decisions that led to [the company] here.” He admitted that the tech giant went on a hiring spree in recent years, but that Google “hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.” According to the company’s latest earnings report, its revenue for the El fourth quarter of 2022 grew one percent over the prior year, but its quarterly net income declined 34 percent year-over-year.
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