Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter have all decided to pay their hourly workers their regular rate even if they are asked to remain at home due to the coronavirus outbreak.
All of the six tech giants and many others have asked their employees to work from home to help prevent the spread of coronavirus, but being forced to work from home could affect hourly employees like cooks and shuttle drivers with jobs that aren’t possible to perform remotely. For the time being, it seems those workers will still get paid even if they have to be at home.
We’ve rounded up the hourly pay policies that we’re aware of in this post.
- Microsoft, in a Thursday evening blog post: “We recognize the hardship that lost work can mean for hourly employees. As a result, we’ve decided that Microsoft will continue to pay all our vendor hourly service providers their regular pay during this period of reduced service needs. This is independent of whether their full services are needed.”
- Facebook, in a statement to TechCrunch: “We are working closely with our vendors to ensure we prioritize our team’s health and safety. Facebook will pay contingent workers that cannot work due to reduced staffing requirements during voluntary work from home, when we close an office, when we choose to send an employee home, or when they are sick.”
- Amazon, in a statement to Axios: “We will continue to pay all hourly employees that support our campus in Seattle and Bellevue – from food service to security guards to janitorial staff – during the time our employees are asked to work from home. In addition, we will subsidize one month of rent for the local small businesses that operate inside our owned buildings to help support them during this period.”
- Google and Twitter told Axios they would also give hourly workers their regular pay. Apple confirmed to The Verge that it would as well.
