Google employees are organizing, and the company is trying to squash the effort—or so the workers charge based on the company hiring a labor-busting consulting firm (as the New York Times reported ). But Googlers’ struggles are not about joining a traditional union, or even fighting for better pay. Instead, they say they’re fighting to return the company to the culture of openness that drew them there in the first place.

The tension hit a new level in recent weeks with the firing of one employee for allegedly leaking company information, and suspension of two others whom Google claims accessed restricted documents (as Bloomberg reported). The employees deny the charges and call their suspensions retaliation for their organizing activities, such as demanding that the company not contract with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and related agencies.

Whether or not Google management meant to discourage employee organizing, its actions have prompted more such organization. The suspension of Google employees Rebecca Rivers and Laurence Berland drew several hundred of their coworkers to a demonstration outside the company’s San Francisco offices on Friday.

“Google promotes itself as an open company, an open culture, where you can challenge authority,” one engineer in the crowd told me. But he feels that is no longer the case. (Like everyone I spoke with, the engineer asked that I not publish his name.)

I don’t feel like Google has to agree with me on everything.”

The company has pulled back from the high expectations it had once set for itself. One example is the so-called TGIF meetings, once held weekly, where employees could ask management about essentially any topic. It was an unprecedented level of openness, but led to trouble starting in 2018 when workers grilled the leadership on issues like Google’s contract to provide artificial intelligence to the U.S. military’s Project Maven

TGIF meetings continued to be contentious, with debates over developing a censored search engine for China called Dragonfly, for instance. Information has also been leaked from the meetings. As a result, Google has cut them back to monthly events and steered them away from touchy topics, reports the Verge.

The cutbacks in TGIF are one symptom in the steady clouding of Google’s once-famous transparency, workers told me. “I don’t feel like Google has to agree with me on everything, all of my political opinions,” said another employee. “But I do want to see more transparency and honesty from leadership, in terms of saying, ‘This is what we’re doing, and here’s why we’re doing it.’