Google Employees Who Work From Home Could Get Pay Cut

Google staff primarily based in the identical workplace earlier than the pandemic might see completely different modifications in pay in the event that they change to working from house completely, with lengthy commuters hit more durable, based on an organization pay calculator seen by Reuters.

It’s an experiment going down throughout Silicon Valley, which regularly units developments for different giant employers.

Facebook and Twitter additionally lower pay for distant staff who transfer to inexpensive areas, whereas smaller firms together with Reddit and Zillow have shifted to location-agnostic pay fashions, citing benefits in the case of hiring, retention and variety.

Alphabet’s Google stands out in providing staff a calculator that permits them to see the consequences of a transfer. However in observe, some distant staff, particularly those that commute from lengthy distances, might expertise pay cuts with out altering their handle.

“Our compensation packages have at all times been decided by location, and we at all times pay on the high of the native market primarily based on the place an worker works from,” a Google spokesperson mentioned, including that pay will differ from metropolis to metropolis and state to state.

One Google worker, who requested to not be recognized for concern of retaliation, sometimes commutes to the Seattle workplace from a close-by county and would seemingly see their pay lower by about 10 % by working from house full-time, in accordance estimates by the corporate’s Work Location Instrument launched in June.

The worker was contemplating distant work however determined to maintain going to the workplace – regardless of the two-hour commute. “It is as excessive of a pay lower as I acquired for my most up-to-date promotion. I did not do all that tough work to get promoted to then take a pay lower,” they mentioned.

Jake Rosenfeld, a sociology professor at Washington College in St. Louis who researches pay willpower, mentioned Google’s pay construction raises alarms about who will really feel the impacts most acutely, together with households.

“What’s clear is that Google does not have to do that,” Rosenfeld mentioned. “Google has paid these employees at 100% of their prior wage, by definition. So it isn’t like they cannot afford to pay their employees who select to work remotely the identical that they’re used to receiving.”

Screenshots of Google’s inside wage calculator seen by Reuters present that an worker residing in Stamford, Connecticut – an hour from New York Metropolis by practice – could be paid 15 % much less if she labored from house, whereas a colleague from the identical workplace residing in New York Metropolis would see no lower from working from house. Screenshots confirmed 5 % and 10 % variations within the Seattle, Boston and San Francisco areas.

Interviews with Google staff point out pay cuts as excessive as 25 % for distant work in the event that they left San Francisco for an virtually as costly space of the state akin to Lake Tahoe.

The calculator states it makes use of US Census Bureau metropolitan statistical areas, or CBSAs. Stamford, Connecticut, for instance, isn’t in New York Metropolis’s CBSA, although many individuals who dwell there work in New York.

A Google spokesperson mentioned the corporate is not going to change an worker’s wage primarily based on them going from workplace work to being totally distant within the metropolis the place the workplace is situated. Workers working within the New York Metropolis workplace can be paid the identical as these working remotely from one other New York Metropolis location, for instance, based on the spokesperson.

Google didn’t particularly handle the difficulty for commuters from areas akin to Stamford, Connecticut.

© Thomson Reuters 2021