Facebook hires contractors for its different kinds of jobs, like moderation of the content as well as training the AI, etc. Those contractors are hired on the hourly bases. But recently, The Verge exposed the poor condition of those contact-bound moderators at the Facebook workplace in an article. Following which, Facebook finally is planning to increase the salaries of those contractors and will be providing them with extra benefits in order to improve their job conditions.
The company said in a blog post, “Today we’re committing to pay everyone who does contract work at Facebook in the US a wage that’s more reflective of local costs of living. And for those who review content on our site to make sure it follows our community standards, we’re going even further. We’re going to provide them with a higher base salary, additional benefits, and more supportive programs given the nature of their jobs.”
The company had set a basic pay of $15 per hour for every contractor in 2015, which in the past four years remained the same. Now according to the announcement from the company, after the increase in the wages the contractors in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City and Washington, DC will soon receive a $20 hourly pay, and the ones from Seattle will earn $18 per hour. And this is not limited to the U.S. alone, but the contractors working with Facebook internationally will also get a hike in their hourly pay.
The Verge’s article on the Facebook moderator exposed a lot about the bad effect on the mental health of people. Many of those moderators even became suicidal. This has been a matter of concern for Facebook too. So now the company is also working on developing tools, that can help in protecting the moderators’ mental well being. According to the company, it will be providing its contractors with resilience training and counselling at their workplace.
The company will also be providing the moderators with other benefits including a minimum 15 days of paid holidays, sick leaves, and $4000 new child benefits for the new parents, who could not get the paternal or maternity paid leaves.
Also for the first time, the company now will provide the contractors with new options while moderating the Facebook content, such as they will now be able to blur an image temporarily for review.
The company said that the moderators and the contractors are the essential part of the company and their well being is the most required thing for the company as they “provide important services across a content review, security, culinary, transportation and other teams” and help in maintaining the content according to its community guideline.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.