Would you accept a 10% pay cut to work from home?

• Workers at Google may get a pay cut for choosing to work remotely and not in the office. 
• The tech giant has introduced an internal calculator to show how moving can negatively impact your salary.
• Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have also warned employees that their pay would be reduced if they leave cities like New York and San Francisco.

It’s been teased since the onset of the pandemic, and now it’s happening: working remotely comes with a price.

Workers at Google who plan to ditch their office and move permanently could see a difference on their next pay stub, according to a report.

The company has rolled out an internal calculator to show workers the effects of a move and how it could result in less pay, according to Reuters. The tool, which launched in June, could send ripples through the tech industry as companies weigh how employees should be paid on where they live.

Representatives from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have each warned employees that their pay would be altered if they were to leave cities like New York and San Francisco.

Now Google is giving employees a first-hand look at how pay can be changed if employees work farther away from cities where Google offices are located.

Employees can lose as much as 25% of their salary

Dubbed the “Work Location Tool,” here’s how it works. According to the report, which includes screenshots of Google’s salary calculator, an employee living in Stamford, CT — an hour from New York City via train — would be paid 15% less if they worked from home, but colleagues that worked remotely in the Big Apple would see no pay cut.

Commuters living in Seattle, Boston and San Francisco areas show 5% and 10% differences, according to the report.

To make matters worse for remote workers, Google employees told Reuters that pay cuts could increase in some areas. For example, if an employee left San Francisco to work at home in Lake Tahoe, another high-priced area of California, they would have their pay reduced by 25%.

For someone making $130,000, that would reduce their annual salary to $97,500.

One employee who commutes to the Seattle office from a nearby county said they would lose about 10% of their pay by working remotely full-time but now will stick with the two-hour commute.

“It’s as high of a pay cut as I got for my most recent promotion. I didn’t do all that hard work to get promoted to then take a pay cut,” they told the outlet.

‘Google doesn’t have to do this’

Jake Rosenfeld, a sociology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, told the outlet that Google’s pay structure is alarming because it could especially hurt workers with families.

“What’s clear is that Google doesn’t have to do this,” Rosenfeld said. “Google has paid these workers at 100 percent of their prior wage, by definition. So it’s not like they can’t afford to pay their workers who choose to work remotely the same that they are used to receiving.”

A Google spokesperson maintained that the company is only following protocol.

“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,” they said, according to Reuters.

As workers have pushed for more remote working options due to the pandemic, it remains to be seen how other industries handle pay and how location plays a role.