Google’s Claire Stapleton — one of the key organizers of massive protests at the tech giant last year — has left after she says the company retaliated against her for leading a 20,000-person walkout in November . Stapleton announced in a Medium post that she is no longer with the company. “I made the choice after the heads of my department branded me with a kind of scarlet letter that makes it difficult to do my job or find another one,” Stapleton said in her post. “If I stayed, I didn’t just worry that there’d be more public flogging, shunning, and stress, I expected it.” Although the protest led to major policy changes at Google, Stapleton claims she and other organizers were targeted and retaliated against in the months that followed. Stapleton originally alleged that her managers retailed against her in April after she and another protest organizer, Meredith Whittaker, were demoted. Stapleton claims that her boss began ignoring her, gave her work given to other people, and...

Google will no longer stop its employees from taking the tech giant to court, which puts an end to its forced arbitration practices. The new rule kicks in on March 21; however, the rules will not apply to contractors, vendors and temps, who make up about half of the company’s workforce. Nearly 20,000 Google employees walked out of work in November to protest Google and other companies’ force arbitration rules along with a list of other grievances. Google responded by ending force arbitration on sexual harassment and discrimination cases, but is now ending the rule for all cases. The protest also encouraged other major tech companies like Facebook, Airbnb and Square to end force arbitration in November. Google’s latest leap may be a big win for full-time employees, but that may not be the case for contractors and temps. As Recode’s Shirin Ghaffary points out , most temp workers are employed by third parties and not by Google itself. This portion of their workforce not being included...