Former Nest Employee Takes Aim at Google’s Media Policy

Google’s Data Classification Guidelines prohibit employees from discussing with outsiders anything that happens at the company. “Everything we work on at Google—all the data and information we create, details of what we do, how we operate, and our plans for the future—is at a minimum, Confidential,” it said.  

The complaint alleges that Google’s Data Classification Guidelines “prohibits the exercise” of employee rights under section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act. That part of the law gives employees the right to organize and to protect themselves by engaging in “other concerted activities,” which includes sharing information about the company with outsiders and the press, according to past rulings by the National Labor Relations Board. The complaint also alleges Google had engaged “in unlawful surveillance” and “unlawful interrogation of employees in order to chill, restrict or take action against employees in the exercise of their section 7 rights.”

In guidelines issued last year, NLRB general counsel Richard Griffin Jr. said that employees have “the right to communicate with the news media, government agencies, and other third parties about wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment.” The guidelines added: “Handbook rules that reasonably would be read to restrict such communications are unlawfully overbroad,” including many companies’ “media policies.” The guidelines were issued after the NLRB settled a case with Wendy’s International over rules in its employee handbook.  

“Google must revise its confidentiality policies to make clear that employees have the right to discuss their working conditions with whomever they wish,” said Chris Baker, the attorney representing the employee. (Mr. Baker posted this statement on his web site.)

Several labor lawyers not involved with the case noted that many technology companies have similar handbooks and policies in place that limit employee speech. Many of them could be illegal, the lawyers said. But because companies don’t publish these policies, it’s difficult to say how many break the law.

In addition to Google's Data Classification guidelines, Google has several other employee conduct policies, including a confidentiality agreement that says employees have the right to "discuss the terms, wages and working conditions of their employment, as protected by applicable law," according to a person who has read the policies. A Google spokesman would not comment on the company's legal argument for how the former employee's Facebook post breached Google's Data Classification guidelines.

Unusual Case

None of the labor lawyers could recall a similar case filed by a highly skilled white-collar worker, like the Nest product manager, however. The NLRB, a federal government agency, usually pursues union-related cases. White-collar employees, they said, usually quietly settle or don't complain at all, for fear of being blacklisted by people in their industry. Without a complaint, the NLRB can’t force companies to change their policies.

“This is fascinating,” said Jeff Bosley, a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine. “If this becomes more public, a lot more people are going to be reviewing their policies to make sure the right carve-outs are in them,” he said.

If the employee’s complaint is successful, the labor board could force Google to reinstate the employee and give him back wages. It could also force Google to change its policies and send a notification to every employee, letting them know that, in fact, they do have the right to speak with others, including journalists, about working conditions.

Employees have “the right to communicate with the news media, government agencies, and other third parties about wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment.”

The former Nest employee, who did not want his name used in the article, said he was fired for uploading “memes” critical of Nest CEO Tony Fadell to a private Facebook group comprised of current and former employees at the company.

Memes, a term used to describe witty phrases overlaid atop web photos or GIFs, are such a popular way of venting frustrations at Google that the company has its own internal “Memegen” tool, allowing employees to make them and post them in real time for everyone at the company to see. Even though openly making fun of or criticizing executives and company policies in this way is acceptable, Google frowns upon employees sharing the memes externally.

Meme Generation

There was a flurry of meme generation recently when Mr. Fadell spoke at a Google all-hands meeting this past spring. Mr. Fadell was responding to a lengthy article in The Information that laid out systemic issues at the company and included pointed criticism of its management, including Mr. Fadell, who co-founded the company before selling it to Google in 2014 for $3.2 billion. He now runs the company within Google’s parent company, Alphabet.

Some of the memes, which accused Mr. Fadell of hurting Google’s reputation and building subpar products, were leaked to Recode. Subsequently, the employee says he was questioned by Brian Katz, a manager on Google’s global investigations team. Mr. Katz is a former diplomatic security services worker in the U.S. State Department who has worked in the New York and Jerusalem field offices and has also worked for the Office of Counterintelligence in Rosslyn, Va.

The employee said he didn’t leak the memes to Recode but admitted he shared a separate group of memes, that didn’t surface publicly, on a private Facebook group. He says Google fired him for that offense. Nest declined to comment.

At a recent all-hands meeting of Nest employees, Mr. Katz noted that there’d been a lot of leaks to the media recently. He reminded employees of the importance of keeping quiet, according to a person who watched the meeting, which was webcast. Mr. Katz said he understood that employees might be frustrated with their work environment, or corporate policies, but he said employees were required to bring those concerns to management, and not to the press or outsiders. He then directed employees to look to their left and look to their right. One of those people, he said, could be leaking information. He directed employees to report on colleagues they believed might be speaking with the press by logging onto an internal whistleblower website. The address for the internal URL was go/stopleaks. Google declined to make Mr. Katz available to comment.

UPDATE: The story has been updated with further information about Google's employee conduct policies.