Google employees signed a petition opposing the company’s ties to ICE. Here’s what HR needs to know.

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Over 1,000 Google employees signed a petition on Feb. 6 calling on the tech company to acknowledge and take action against the state-sanctioned “violence that workers face each day” being perpetrated by federal immigration agencies, and divulge information regarding Google’s contracts with these organizations, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

“We are vehemently opposed to Google’s partnerships with DHS, CBP, and ICE. We consider it our leadership’s ethical and policy-bound responsibility to disclose all contracts and collaboration with CBP and ICE, and to divest from these partnerships,” the petition said.

What’s happening? The Google employees who signed the petition are “appalled by the violence inflicted by the United States Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs & Border Protection (CBP).” They’re not alone: 46% of US adults want to abolish ICE, according to January data from market research firm YouGov. Another 60% of US adults “disapprove” of the actions ICE is taking as part of the administration’s immigration crackdown, PBS News/NPR/Marist Poll data found, and 65% think ICE has “gone too far.”

With this petition, Google employees may be “trying to assert a greater level of control over what they do on a day-to-day basis,” Steven Nevolis, an employment attorney and partner at New York-based law firm Ellenoff, Grossman, and Schole, said. “It’s not unusual to think that some would band together and say, ‘Hey, if I’m going to be spending this much time at work and energy at work, I want to be doing work that I feel good about.”

What’s next? The National Labor Relations Act protects employees who raise concerns related to wages, safety, or working conditions via petitions to their employers, Nevolis told HR Brew.

“This doesn’t seem to be that,” Nevolis said. “This seems to be that these employees are objecting to an operational business practice of Google…There’s no real law that covers protecting employees who complain about lawful ways in which their employer does business.”

What’s “unfortunate for employees,” he added, is that Google isn’t legally required to stop doing business with these agencies. “This could be a precursor to a unionization drive,” in which legal concerns could arise if employees bring their demands to the bargaining table, Nevolis said, but that does not appear to be happening here.

This could also be a push to encourage employees at other companies, who do business with these agencies, to speak out too, he said.

He recommended that any company in a similar situation respond with “a very deft touch, PR-wise and employee relations-wise.”

Google declined HR Brew’s request for comment.