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Tech giants continue to demonstrate a zero tolerance policy towards employees who interrupt operations with protests involving Israel.
Microsoft is the latest to experience anti-Israel protests. On Monday during Microsoft’s Build developer conference a Microsoft employee, Joe Lopez, disrupted the opening keynote speech of CEO Satya Nadella before getting escorted out of the room.
Lopez reportedly yelled, “How about you show Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure?”
According to the Associated Press, Lopez later sent a mass email to colleagues disputing the company’s claims about how its Azure cloud computing platform is used in Gaza.
Staff protest
Microsoft then fired Lopez on Monday, but that was not the only protest Microsoft has faced.
On day two of Build, a Palestinian tech worker allegedly disrupted Microsoft’s head of CoreAI during his presentation, and then on Wednesday, two former Microsoft employees disrupted a Build session, and after the commotion a Microsoft executive inadvertently revealed internal messages regarding Walmart’s use of AI.
It is not clear at the time of writing what has happened to these staff members.
But according to the AP, Microsoft has previously fired employees who protested company events over its work in Israel, including at its 50th anniversary party in April.
It comes after Microsoft acknowledged last week that it provided AI services to the Israeli military for the war in Gaza but said it had found no evidence to date that its Azure platform and AI technologies were used to target or harm people in Gaza.
Meanwhile the ‘No Azure for Apartheid’ (NOAA) protest group reported that “dozens of Microsoft workers” have been unable to send emails with the words “Palestine,” “Gaza,” and “Genocide” in email subject lines or in the body of a message.
NOAA is reportedly led by Microsoft employees and ex-employees.
It claims that Lopez received a termination letter after his Monday protest but couldn’t open it.
Microsoft hasn’t returned emailed requests for comment about its response to this week’s protests, AP reported.
The four-day conference ends Thursday.
Zero tolerance?
Microsoft is not the only tech giant that seems to have adopted a zero tolerance approach to staff disrupting operations with anti-Israel protests.
In April 2024 for example, Google had terminated 28 employees, after a series of protests against labour conditions and the company’s contract to provide the Israeli government with cloud computing and artificial intelligence services.
A week later Google fired more staff (for an alleged total of around 50 staff), after it had alleged that a small number of employees affiliated with the ‘No Tech for Apartheid’ campaign had entered and disrupted work at two office locations in New York and Sunnyvale, California.
Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai at the time warned staff that Google offices are “not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe.”
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