Facebook Was Willing to Risk the Lives of Many of its Lowest Paid Workers. Bud Baxter Follow Mar 19 · 5 min read

I am a member of Facebook’s Contingent Workforce. The past few days have made it clear that our lives are not valued by those making decisions about them.

When it became obvious that COVID 19 was an international emergency, I and many other contingent workers asked if we had to keep coming into the office. In response, many of us were told that our jobs could not be performed remotely because of the sensitive nature of our work. We were also told that we would not be receiving paid sick leave — in fact, at least one manager laughed at the idea.

As more of us raised concerns and the climate of fear intensified, management finally started sending people home. Those who were sent home and unable to work remotely were given full pay, demonstrating that the companies that employ them are in fact fully capable of paying us even if we are unable to work during this time.

Some of us, however, were told that if we were ill or uncomfortable coming into the office we could use the paid time off we had accumulated. If we used up all of our PTO, we had the option of staying home on unpaid leave. After enough people complained about this, we were told that we would have the option to use more PTO than we had acquired and make up for it later. For example, if you had forty hours of PTO and used eighty hours of it, you would have a balance of negative forty hours of PTO that you would need to earn back before beginning to build a positive balance again.

It was widely agreed upon that this was less than ideal, but at least it was something. However, several people who made contact with HR were told that we would not in fact be receiving negative PTO. If we used all of the paid leave we had acquired, we would have to go without pay or come into work.

Distressed workers opened up to each other about their anxieties. People spoke of histories of chronic illness, of elderly parents who relied on them to act as caretakers. People made calculations no one should have to make, such as whether it was better to work and risk infecting a pregnant spouse, or whether it was better to stay home and burn through the money that they had saved up in order to provide for their future child. The managers who had been tasked with relaying the information that we would be put at risk of contracting COVID 19 started visibly cracking under the pressure of the directives they were receiving from their superiors on the one side, and the extreme frustration of their workers on the other. Some were seen walking around with reddened eyes, and others lost composure and screamed at workers who asked questions or expressed frustration.

Finally, on March 17, Facebook issued global office closures. Some of those who had not yet been allowed to go home are now working remotely, while others are receiving paid leave and waiting to be told when or if they will start working again.

Workers for contractors including Genpact, WiPro, Milestone, Accenture, and Astreya, working in locations including California, Texas, and Ireland all told similar stories. This indicates that the decision whether or not to give us sick leave or the option to work remotely was up to Facebook itself rather than our contractors.

Facebook’s extreme reluctance to do the right thing by sending us home points toward a truth they don’t want us to realize: Our labor is vital to the company — so vital, in fact, that they were willing to risk our health and their public image in order to keep as many of us working as they could for as long as possible.

This conclusion is given further support by the current state of Facebook’s moderation. Many users whose benign posts have been pulled down think — not unreasonably — that Facebook is intentionally censoring them. This may be a contributing factor, but the main one is that many content moderators are not working right now, forcing Facebook to rely on algorithms far less sophisticated than the general public has been led to believe.

Many of us have been asking ourselves the same couple of questions: If our work is so vital, why are we not paid more? Why are privileges that full time employees take for granted withheld from us?

Most of our work consists in sitting or standing at a desk pushing the same few buttons over and over again. The buttons take some of us on daily journeys through the worst horrors that can be found on the internet, including but not limited to bigotry, death threats, images of destroyed bodies, and child pornography. Others use the buttons to access private information that must be treated with extreme care. This work is monotonous to the point of parody, but the workers at any given office collectively make thousands of highly sensitive, important decisions every day.

This piece has focused on Facebook’s contingent workforce, but many other people who work in the low levels of the tech industry would tell you similar things. Our stories contribute to a lesson that we are all learning the hard way: Many of the most essential functions of our society are performed by people who receive low pay and less fanfare. While others stay home, nurses, firefighters, social workers, sanitation workers, warehouse staffers, grocery store workers, fast food employees, and others must go out to protect and provide for the rest of us. All of these people are putting their lives on the line by continuing to work. There is a temptation to think of this as being exceptional and temporary, but in fact this condition has always prevailed. Even during periods of relative stability, these jobs are both more important and more dangerous than those held by people who receive massive amounts of money and public adulation. Hopefully, the bravery and hard work of those we rely on are remembered when this crisis is over.