Dozens of employees and contractors are protesting outside Google HQ today after the company announced plans to lay off 12,000 employees

The protest is being held by the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU), a large part of which is made up of contractors. The union claims that the layoffs disproportionately affected contractors, and the company cut thousands of contractors without warning.<br><br>Last week, Google announced that it would be laying off 12,000 employees, which is about 6% of its total workforce. The company’s CEO Sundar Pichai said that the layoffs will happen across several divisions, including recruiting and engineering. However, the company is only providing 16 weeks of severance pay for the affected employees, which probably won’t be enough for them to find a new job.