Facebook presses US suppliers to pay workers $15 an hour

Facebook plans to require its large US contractors and vendors to pay their workers hourly wages well above the legal minimum and provide them with parental and vacation benefits.

The social networking company's announcement comes after Microsoft told its big US suppliers to give their employees paid holiday or leave. Both moves are part of broader efforts by leading tech companies to show they are taking on the greater social responsibility that comes with their surging wealth and corporate power.

While Microsoft focused on vacation time, Facebook on Wednesday went further and said it would force its contractors to pay a minimum wage of $15 an hour and provide benefits to new parents.

The move puts Facebook at the forefront of a national movement to raise minimum wage levels in the US, which has become the focus of White House attempts to tackle rising inequality. San Francisco and Seattle have already passed laws that will impose local $15 minimum wage requirements in three years' time, the highest in the country.

In a blog post announcing the move, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, positioned the minimum pay move partly as a gender issue. "Women, because they comprise about two-thirds of minimum wage workers nationally, are particularly affected by wage adjustments," she said.

The Facebook executive's personal campaign to encourage women to take more responsibility for advancing their own interests at work, outlined in her 2013 book Lean In, has attracted controversy over whether those in low-paying or less influential jobs have the power to improve their personal positions.

Facebook also said its contractors would be told to make a $4,000 payment to new parents who do not already have paid parental leave so that they can afford to take time off.

Ms Sandberg called the paternity benefit "an important step for stronger families and healthier children".

She was writing less than two weeks after the sudden death of her husband, fellow tech executive Dave Goldberg. The couple had talked openly about their efforts to make adequate time for their family.

The attention to pay levels, paid vacation and other benefits for contractors follows the spotlight that big tech companies shone last year on the gender imbalance in their own workforces. By disclosing the scarcity of women employed in engineering and senior leadership positions, the tech companies said they wanted to set a mark they would later be judged by as they try to change their hiring practices.

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