Google employees may face a pay cut if they decide to work from home indefinitely, according to an internal salary calculator obtained by Reuters.
The tech giant has appeared broadly supportive of remote workers in the pandemic and just last week said it approved almost 10,000 employee requests to work from home. The firm pushed back its planned return-to-office date to October 18 in light of the rising number of COVID-19 cases driven by the Delta variant.
But Reuters said the pay calculator showed that some remote employees — particularly those with long commutes — could face pay cuts without changing their addresses.
In one example, Reuters found that an employee living in Stamford, Connecticut, an hour from Google's New York office, would be paid 15% less if they worked from home, while a colleague living in New York would see no cut. Employees who move from San Francisco could face a cut of as much as 25%, Reuters reported, citing interviews with workers.
One employee told Reuters that they commuted to Google's Seattle office from a nearby county and that they faced a pay cut of 10% if they worked from home full time.
"It's as high of a pay cut as I got for my most recent promotion," they said, adding, "I didn't do all that hard work to get promoted to then take a pay cut."
A Google spokesperson told Reuters: "Our compensation packages have always been determined by location, and we always pay at the top of the local market based on where an employee works from."
Google did not immediately respond to Insider's request for further comment.
Facebook has said some staffers who continue working remotely in more affordable areas may face a pay cut. Jack Dorsey's Twitter has adopted a similar stance.
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