Very, very cool:

First, Microsoft will continue to pay the wages of hourly workers of vendors that provided services on the company’s campuses before the pandemic but who have not been needed since Microsoft shifted to a work-from-home model. The company will “continue to pay their full wages until whatever day it is they come back — we assume that it’ll be in 2021,” Smith said Thursday.

Microsoft began that policy in March, two days after telling its own employees to work from home, and has since spent more than $110 million on those wages in Washington state. “We just thought it was important to publicly let all of them and their families know that we don’t want them to spend the holidays in December worrying about what’s going to happen to them in the new year.”

Source: Microsoft to spend $110 million on economic, education initiatives to boost Washington state’s COVID-19 recovery | The Seattle Times

Coldstreams