Is that so? When faced with unions in their infancy, often the companies come out with all guns blazing. They might even face fines after an incredibly lengthy court battle, but putting down that organizing effort down while it hasn't taken roots is more important to them.

Once a company becomes big enough, claims that they're lying to persecute a handful of users become implausible because the potential liability for doing so vastly outweighs the minor benefits they might gain. And this isnt the 1920s, you can't just fire people for trying to unionize and realistically think that it will solve the problem or that no one will notice.

Ignore the names of the companies / individuals involved, their histories, etc-- just look at the incentives that each party has around lying vs telling the truth-- and it's not hard to accept that Google is more likely to be truthful about this than a terminated employee.

I suspect they have evidence of exactly what they said, that the screenshots were obtained by people outside Google, but don't have evidence that the fired workers were responsible for that.

Given the other contents of the statement, I think if Google had evidence that a fired worker sent a screenshot outside the company, they would say so.

They're representing the company in their official capacities, and as such the company will bear any consequences. There can also be individual sanctions, such as happened with Elon Musk who is now individually forbidden from being CEO because of a tweet he made.

> In my observation the more common scenarios are that the company and employees either fully get away with blatant lies

Then you're not paying attention. Public companies lying to shareholders open themselves up to massive liability, including SEC action and civil suits from those shareholders.