Google Experiences Hundreds of Covid Cases After Return-to-Office Mandate

"Google employees are receiving regular notifications from management of Covid-19 infections," CNBC report Friday — "causing some to question the company's return-to-office mandates." The employees, who spoke with CNBC on the condition of anonymity, said since they have been asked to return to offices, infections notifications pop up in their email inboxes regularly.... The company began requiring most employees to return to physical offices at least three days a week in April. Since then, staffers have pushed back on the mandate after they worked efficiently for so long at home while the company enjoyed some of its fastest revenue growth in 15 years. Google has offered full-time employees the option to request permanent remote work, but it's unclear how many workers have been approved. Google's Covid-19 outbreak in Los Angeles is currently the largest of any employer in LA., according to the city's public health dashboard. Deadline.com first reported that the tech giant's trendy Silicon Beach campus in Venice, Calif., recorded 145 infections while 135 cases were recorded at the company's large Playa Vista campus. Staffers have been filling Memegen, an internal company image-sharing site, with memes about the increased number of exposure notifications they're receiving. One meme, which was upvoted 2,840 times, showed a photo of an inbox with the email subject from a San Francisco-based facilities manager stating "We're so excited to see you back in the office!" and a subsequent email subject line stating "Notification of Confirmed COVID-19 Case...." Some employees said they received a spike in notifications from the Mountain View, Calif. headquarters and in San Francisco offices after the company held a return-to-office celebration, where Grammy award-winning artist Lizzo performed for thousands of employees at the Shoreline Amphitheater, near Google's main campus. Defending the safety of working on-site, a Google spokesperson told CNBC they hadn't been experiencing a sudden recent spike in their Covid cases, arguing that instead the hundreds of Covid cases had been occurring over "the last few months."

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