In a blog post yesterday, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg set forth a new mandate for a fair minimum wage and benefits for contract workers and vendors who work with the social media giant.
Sandberg announced that the benefits included a $15 minimum wage, minimum 15 paid days off (holiday, sick and vacation time), and $4,000 child benefit for workers who don’t receive paid parental leave.
“This will give both women and men the flexibility to take paid parental leave, an important step for stronger families and healthier children,” Sandberg wrote.
Sandberg said that the standards were put into effect on May 1, and Facebook is now working with its vendors to ensure they are implemented within the next year. It includes workers who do “substantial” work for the company, as well as U.S. companies with more than 25 employees supporting Facebook.
Sandberg cites the move as not only being “the right thing to do” but also supporting women workers, who “comprise about two-thirds of minimum-wage workers nationally.”
Taking better care of the entire workforce — not just execs and engineers — is becoming a bigger issue for Big Tech. As we reported, Microsoft announced in March that it was requiring “its suppliers to give their employees who do work for the Redmond company at least 15 days of paid leave each year.”
