How the Google walkout transformed tech workers into activists

At the end of October 2018, Claire Stapleton, then a YouTube employee, sent an email to an internal listserv where women discussed their experiences at Google. Employees had just learned that the company's board of directors had approved a $90-million payout to Andy Rubin, a former Google executive, despite finding that a subordinate's sexual misconduct claims against him were credible. Stapleton suggested she and her fellow listserv contributors do something about it.

She and a circle of collaborators started a shared document listing their concerns and demands, including an end to mandatory arbitration and a public sexual harassment transparency report. Days later, on Nov. 1, 2018, they and 20,000 other Google workers around the world stopped working and poured out of their offices in protest.

A year later, the legacy of the walkout has been far-reaching and complex. Although most of the protesters' demands remain unmet, their efforts have given rise to a network of worker-led movements both inside Google and in the broader tech industry, marking a new era of tech companies being challenged by their own employees.

At Amazon, Microsoft and Google, thousands of workers have lent their names or bodies to protests against doing business with oil and gas companies. Hundreds of Amazon workers joined together in a call for their employer to stop selling facial recognition software to law enforcement. Contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement have inspired petitions within Amazon, Microsoft and Salesforce. At Apple, Chief Executive Tim Cook was forced to defend a decision to block an app used by pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong to avoid police.

It's a new strain of worker activism, one whose practitioners are as preoccupied with the social impact of the multibillion-dollar companies that employ them as they are with their own work conditions. And it's one that