San Francisco, California - Google must turn over internal documents related to the tech giant's secret union-busting campaign after a National Labor Relations Board judge ruled against it.

According to Motherboard, the ruling is part of a case against Google's Project Vivian, which includes charges of illegal surveillance of employees who tried to unionize in 2019, as well as firing some of those workers in retaliation for their workers' rights activism.

Google reportedly gathered troves of information on its workers who were interested in unionizing and union elections, including details on temperament, employee performance and conduct, and union leanings.

The documents that the NLRB now wants to see include "campaign materials prepared for distribution to employees, training materials for staff on how to campaign against unionization among persons they manage, anti-union messaging and message amplification advice for [Google], and updates on how the campaign is being viewed among employees and/or in various reports."

The NLRB is also looking at the firing of two worker activists, Kathryn Spiers and Laurence Berland, based on the secretly gathered information. The two argue that they did nothing wrong when they used internal resources to help fellow employees get updated on unionizing options and elections.

Google's efforts to weaken a workers' union included hiring a labor relations company, IRI Consultants, to come up with messages and strategies to prevent employees from unionizing, and help Google come up with its in-house anti-union Project Vivian.

If nothing else, the uncovering of Project Vivian lifts the lid on the relentless and well-resourced efforts of a corporate giant to stop its employees from unionizing.