The petition was delivered by leaders of the Alphabet Workers Union to Sundar Pichai’s office at Google’s California headquarters.
More than 4,500 Google employees have signed a petition calling for layoff protections, as sweeping workforce cuts continue to hit the tech industry.
The petition was brought to Google’s California headquarters yesterday (16 July) by leaders of the Alphabet Workers Union, with union president Parul Koul delivering it to Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s office.
Koul, a software engineer at the tech giant, reportedly left the petition with a staff member who committed to deliver it to Pichai, while more than 100 Google employees rallied outside. Koul stated that upon delivering the petition, the group was “greeted with closed doors and no response for the most part”.
“We are demanding that Google workers have the conditions and the security to do their best work, where they can actually bring new ideas and innovations to life instead of working in an environment driven by fear, where you might be pit against your colleagues or every day you’re not sure how much longer you will have this job,” said Koul at the demonstration outside Google’s headquarters, according to San Francisco’s ABC7 News.
According to The Guardian, the union-led petition calls for guaranteed severance, buyouts before mandatory layoffs in all product areas and the option to take severance as extended paid leave.
Union members have also asked to end performance ratings, which they say are based on achieving quotas rather than on merit.
The petition comes as scores of layoff decisions continue to affect thousands of tech workers across the industry, with a significant number of cuts being announced in 2026 alone.
Since the start of the year, companies including Meta, Microsoft (as well as its gaming division Xbox), Amazon, LinkedIn, GitLab, Cloudflare, Coinbase, eBay, Oracle, Snapchat, Epic Games, Atlassian and Block have all laid off scores of employees – as many of the same companies ramp up expenditure on AI around the same time. Some companies, such as Block and Atlassian, have also explicitly stated that their decision to cut jobs was directly linked to their increased focus on AI.
Google has also reportedly been quietly laying off employees this year, with the company recently cutting roles from its Google Cloud division, according to Business Insider. One source reportedly told the publication that Google cited “the need to reinvest in growth areas, such as AI”, to justify the cuts.
The tech giant also reportedly laid off more than one-third of managers overseeing small teams between August 2024 and August 2025, according to CNBC.
Commenting on the Alphabet Workers Union petition and the wider trend of layoffs in favour of AI, Rebecca Hinds, head of the Work AI Institute at Glean, told SiliconRepublic.com that business leaders need to adjust their view on AI in regards to workforce reductions.
“Leaders should stop asking how many roles AI can remove and start asking how work should be redesigned – what AI should do, what humans must continue to own and how the productivity gains will be reinvested in people,” she said.
“Companies that use AI only as a headcount lever may cut costs in the short term, but they will also hollow out the skills and institutional knowledge they need to compete.”
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