Two Google employees who worked on a mass walkout of workers say they faced retaliation from company management.

In an internal post first reported by Wired, Google Open Research head Meredith Whittaker and Claire Stapleton, a YouTube marketing employee, said their roles at the company had changed following protests from employees. Whittaker said she was told that her role “would be changed dramatically” after Google disbanded its AI ethics council, and that she could no longer work at the AI Now Institute research center. The decision to abandon the council was made as employees criticized the inclusion of the president of the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Stapleton, who has worked at the company for 12 years, said in the post that after the walkout, she was told she would be demoted. After hiring a lawyer, she wrote, the decision was reversed, “at least on paper.” She said she had found a “sad pattern” — people who stand up “are punished, sidelined, and pushed out,” she wrote, while perpetrators “often go unimpeded, or are even rewarded.”

Whittaker, Stapleton, and others organized the mass walkout of 20,000 Google employees in November to protest the company’s handling of sexual harassment allegations.

I'm so grateful for your support. I remain staunchly committed to my work @AINowInstitute. Google's retaliation isn't about me, or @clairewaves. It's about silencing dissent & making us afraid to speak honestly about tech & power. NOT OK. Now more than ever, it's time to speak up — Meredith Whittaker (@mer__edith) April 23, 2019

“I’m so grateful for your support,” Whittaker said in a tweet after the post was made public. “I remain staunchly committed to my work @AINowInstitute. Google’s retaliation isn’t about me, or @clairewaves. It’s about silencing dissent & making us afraid to speak honestly about tech & power. NOT OK. Now more than ever, it’s time to speak up.”

“We prohibit retaliation in the workplace, and investigate all allegations,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. “Employees and teams are regularly and commonly given new assignments, or reorganized, to keep pace with evolving business needs. There has been no retaliation here.”

The full internal post, obtained by Wired, is below: