[Source: Reuters]

Hundreds of Google employees staged a walkout at the company’s London offices on Tuesday, following a dispute over layoffs.

In January, Google’s parent company Alphabet (GOOGL.O) announced it was laying off 12,000 employees worldwide, equivalent to 6% of its global workforce.

The move came amid a wave of job cuts across corporate America, particularly in the tech sector, which has so far seen companies shed more than 290,000 workers since the start of the year, according to tracking site Layoffs.fyi.

Trade union Unite, which counts hundreds of Google’s UK employees among its members, said the company had ignored concerns put forward by employees.

A Google employee attending the protest, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, told Reuters that talks between employees and management had been “extremely frustrating.”

Google’s senior management has been engaged in redundancy talks in many parts of Europe, in line with local employment laws.

Last month, workers at the company’s Zurich office in Switzerland staged a similar walkout, with employee representatives claiming Google had rejected their proposals to reduce job cuts.

Google employs more than 5,000 people in the United Kingdom.