(NEW YORK CITY)—Yesterday evening, fired Google workers, including those organizing with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign, filed a complaint with the National Relations Labor Board (NLRB) after Google unlawfully retaliated against them, placing them on administrative leave and/or terminating their jobs.

These forced leaves and terminations came after workers organized a peaceful, non-disruptive protest about the terms and conditions of their work, including their forced contributions to Project Nimbus, Google and Amazon’s joint $1.2 billion contract with Israel, as well as the discrimination, harassment, and censorship of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim workers at Google, in addition to other workers who spoke up against the contract.

Workers are seeking reinstatement of their jobs, back pay, and affirmation from Google leadership that it will not retaliate against its workers for lawful collective protest.

“Google is attempting to instill fear in employees by illegally punishing and retaliating against those expressing dissent about Google’s profit and complicity in genocide. We must resist Google’s repression of worker organizing, and demand that Google be held responsible for their retaliatory actions against employees asking for ethical applications of their labor. We, the workers, will not stop organizing our collective power to ensure an end of technology for apartheid and genocide,” stated Zelda Montes, a member of the Nimbus Nine, who were arrested by Google’s orders, and subsequently fired.

Yesterday’s NLRB filing comes after Google illegally retaliated against and fired over 50 workers, including those not directly involved with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign, in response to the recent historic, coast-to-coast sit-ins at Google offices protesting Project Nimbus:

Two weeks ago, Google workers organizing with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign hosted an afternoon of rallies outside the company’s offices in Sunnyvale, New York City, and Seattle. Hundreds of workers and supporters joined a peaceful, non-disruptive protest at Google Headquarters in solidarity with the workers’ demands: that Google and Amazon drop Project Nimbus; that the company stop the harassment, intimidation, bullying, silencing, and censorship of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim Googlers; and that the company address the health and safety workplace conditions crisis that workers, especially those in Google Cloud, are facing due to the impacts of their work.

During the protests, employees sat and patiently waited for ten hours to share their concerns about Project Nimbus, as well as their demands, with Google executives. Instead, Google decided to order for the arrest of 9 protestors sitting in the company’s offices in Sunnyvale, California and New York City.

This protest came on the heels of explosive reporting from TIME Magazine which found that Google has signed contracts with the Israel Defense Forces, the Israeli military, as recently as three weeks ago. Despite its repeated denials that Project Nimbus is “not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services,” TIME has confirmed that the Ministry of Defense not only has access to the Project Nimbus technology; the Ministry has its own “landing zone” into Google Cloud, or a secure entry point to Google Cloud infrastructure, allowing the ministry to “store and process data, and access AI services.”

This confirms that for three years, Google has been lying to workers, consumers, and the public about the use cases of Project Nimbus.

What’s more, recent reporting from The New York Times confirms that the Israeli military has used Google Photos to develop a “hit list” of Palestinians in Gaza.

Workers leading the No Tech for Apartheid campaign claim that Google and Amazon are leading the world’s first AI powered genocide. Recent investigations by +972 Mag revealed that the Israeli military is using artificial intelligence to target and assassinate Palestinians in Gaza. While the reporting does not reveal the source of the technology, there is no guarantee Amazon and Google’s products are not being used to support this mass assassination effort.

The stakes of Google’s entanglements with the Israeli military and government through Project Nimbus are broader than Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Workers claim they are fighting back not only against Project Nimbus, but against the militarization of Google’s business. Google executives’ retaliation against workers organizing with No Tech for Apartheid, workers claim, is disproportionate compared to execs’ previous reactions to worker dissent because dropping the Project Nimbus contract would threaten Google’s burgeoning war profiteering business model.