Google is being sued by one of its own employees based on the accusations of maintaining a "spying program" and preventing the workers from sharing concerns with anyone.
The class-action lawsuit filed on Tuesday in California state court in San Francisco states that Google's employment agreements violate various state labour laws and were illegal on several fronts. The plaintiff in the case is simply identified as "John Doe", who held a position of a product manager in the company, to maintain anonymity.
According to the complaint, all current and former Google employees are prohibited from discussing anything about the company, which varies from discussing their working experience at the company to sharing views about their boss to their spouse or friends. The lawsuit also claims that Google employees sign agreements, which prohibits them from reporting illegal conduct they may have witnessed or highlighting any dangerous product defects.
"Google restricts what Googlers say internally in order to conceal potentially illegal conduct. It instructs employees in its training programs to do the following: "Don't send an email that says, 'I think we broke the law' or 'I think we violated this contract,'" the lawsuit reads.
"The training program also advises employees that they should not be candid when speaking with Google's attorneys about dangerous products or violations of the law. The program advises Googlers that some jurisdictions do not recognise the attorney-client privilege and "inside the U.S., government agencies often pressure companies to waive the privilege," it adds.
As per the lawsuit, the plaintiff worked for Google for over 2 years before being falsely expelled for leaking proprietary information to the press. The Google employee also said that revealing true identity will pose a threat to future job prospects and the reputation at the company, Reuters reported. Plaintiffs are rarely allowed to proceed anonymously.
On the contrary to Doe's claims, Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc, said that they were "baseless" and the agreements that employees sign are designed to protect sensitive business information and nothing more.
"We're very committed to an open internal culture, which means we frequently share with employees details of product launches and confidential business information," the spokesperson said.
