The rumor going around is that she thought she was going to be retaliated against, and the documents were her backing up some of her emails in case she was fired illegally to discuss with her lawyer.
Who's to say she didn't. Some of the wrongful termination suits I've seen personally lived and died based on if an employee had their own copy of emails. Discovery doesn't always work against an entity that's already behaving illegally.
'Wrongful termination doesn't tend to hit the court system like you think it should unless you have hard evidence, particularly in at will states' is absolutely something I've heard from lawyers.
Discovery is a thing. Big companies are more likely to catch these shenanigans, making it automatically a legit term, and also more likely to have retention policies where you can get it later in discovery.
It's not a big corp vs small corp distinction; it's a question of how important the employees in question at the company are who were in the more powerful position. A large company isn't going to bend over backwards for a seven rungs down middle manager committing the wrongful termination, but when the most influential members of the company are involved all the stops come out. It's just more likely that a small company involves extremely influential to the company employees.
1. Google's statement, is it still accurate then? Seems to me.
2. Firing the employee. There's one thing for the law to shield employee from legal repercussions in a situation of them sending communications to their lawyer and quite another for the company still being within rights to fire them because of that. A large set of perfectly legal actions can get you fired at almost any workplace.
"I know, since I'm worried I'm going to get fired for vague non-specific reasons, I'm going to directly violate company policy and get terminated for cause" is an odd game plan.
Did you ever leave a notebook that had work notes at home or in your car? Ever gotten an e-mail on your work account that should have gone to a personal one? Use any SaaS service that would get access to company data?
No, what I'm saying is that dismissing a complaint of the company doing something wrong is missing the point. Deferring to a policy whose theoretical purpose is to defend against leaks and protect trade secrets as a justification for firing someone who was archiving their own e-mails is naive.
"Archiving their own emails". There's an orwellian tint to your comments.
This policy is not arbitrary, rare, or unreasonable. In fact not enforcing it is not really an option, if you want to continue to exist as a company.
Every comment you have made in this thread has tried to distort the truth, and you've avoided saying what actually happened.
I have no respect for this sort of rhetoric. Instead of making an actual point you deliberately misdescribe the facts.
You, sir or madam, are a liar.
Two wrongs don't make a right. I'm calling neither Mitchell, Gebru, nor Google blameless here. But there's no point discussing it with someone who's actively out to move away from the truth.
