New Delhi: Layoffs continue in tech companies around the world. Recently, Alphabet, the parent company of the giant tech company Google, recently announced the layoffs of 12,000 employees. Now the difficulties of the company seem to be increasing. Many of the company’s employees protested in California and New York this week in the US to call attention to working conditions for subcontract workers and support thousands of colleagues.
According to Bloomberg News, one rally was held on Wednesday at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, while the other took place near Google’s corporate office in New York City. About 50 employees protested outside a Google Store on Ninth Avenue in New York, minutes after Alphabet Inc. reported its fourth-quarter results.
Company profit in fourth quarter result
The company earned a profit of $ 13.6 billion in the fourth quarter. Alberta Devore, a software engineer, said, “Today Google has rejected its logic of laying off 12,000 of its co-workers. It is clear that the savings the company is making from the layoffs are nothing compared to the billions spent on stock buybacks or the billions it made last quarter.”
Demonstration organized by Alphabet Workers Union
According to Bloomberg’s report, the demonstrations were organized by the labor group Alphabet Workers Union. Its members include Google subcontractors as well as employees.
The company will slow down the pace of hiring
Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat said that Alphabet Inc. will slow down the pace of hiring in 2023. Porat said on the company’s earnings call on Thursday that the severance charge for the job cuts would be in the range of $1.9 billion to $2.3 billion and would be reflected in this quarter’s results.
6 percent retrenchment in the global workforce
Alphabet Inc has done the biggest layoff ever last month. The company had laid off 6 percent of the global workforce. Alphabet’s headcount grew to 190,234 in the last quarter, but the figure does not include the most recent round of layoffs. Porat said that most of the appointments were for technical roles.
