Google employees at the tech giant's headquarters in Mountain View, California, walk off the job to protest the company's handling of sexual misconduct claims.

Days before Google ended its long-running tradition of weekly all-hands meetings, a group of Google workers staged a protest in the company's San Francisco offices in solidarity with two employees who were being investigated about their retaliation claims, according to an internal memo obtained by CNBC.

Some 20 people organized at Google's 345 Spear St. office in downtown San Francisco to protest the company placing Rebecca Rivers and Laurence Berland on sudden and indefinite administrative leave the prior week, the memo states. Authors of the memo, which was circulated internally at Google on Monday, claimed the actions were an act of retaliation against the workers.

The protest was timed to overlap with Berland's meeting with management. He was based in San Francisco, while Rivers was located out of state.

"On the day of Laurence's interrogation, we decided that we would break the isolation and fear tactics by bringing the group of 20 supporters to join him in his meeting," the memo says. "When we took action to support Laurence on Wednesday, Google published a Daily Insider defending their enforcement of the need-to-know-policy and when Rebecca bravely refuted the false account a Google spokesperson made to the press, Google responded by canceling TGIF as we know it — reducing its frequency and restricting it to product-only discussions."

A Google spokesperson didn't respond to a request for comment.

Tensions between employees and management have been on the rise since 2018, when staffers staged a massive walkout after the company paid Android co-founder Andy Rubin $90 million as they dismissed him for sexual assault. At all-hands meetings since, employees have increasingly voiced their concerns about sensitive issues such as handling of sexual harassment, hires from the government and contracts with government agencies. In recent months, employees have leaked meeting notes to the media, showing a growing amount of conflict between executives and workers.