Microsoft is giving their employees a $1500 “pandemic” bonus! While this is a great effort, and every worker deserves this, the fact that this is so rare speaks volumes.
You know who really deserves a bonus? The workers who were most vulnerable during the pandemic.
While the government and company CEOs argue about whether service workers are worth $15 an hour, the average Microsoft employee’s base salary is about $122,000 a year. But the differences in salary between essential workers and Microsoft employees aren’t the only problem.
Working from home was a luxury essential workers didn’t have – they were on the front lines.
Why isn’t there a bigger push to give these workers a well-deserved bonus for THEIR hard work and vulnerability? Performative actions like TEMPORARY $5 “hero pay” increases are not enough.
Service workers, especially Black workers, are regularly grossly underpaid, and the sacrifices they made during the pandemic aren’t being celebrated or compensated fairly. With more businesses reopening, pay is increasing slowly – but not enough.
The people that deserve pandemic bonuses the most are being ignored and thrown back into low-paying service jobs with few real wage increases.
We all deserve to be compensated fairly for our efforts, hard work and sacrifice! But our capitalist system has never followed logic or compensated workers fairly – even “essential” workers during a pandemic.