Facebook pushes to improve benefits pay for contractors

(MENAFN- Arab News) NEW YORK: Facebook is pushing for higher pay and improved benefits for the janitors cooks and other workers who support its employees.
The world's largest online social network says it is implementing a set of new standards for its US-based contractors who do a 'substantial amount of work' with Facebook.
Sheryl Sandberg Facebook's chief operating officer announced the changes in a blog post.
The new standards include a minimum wage of $15 an hour at least 15 paid days off and for those who don't receive paid parental leave a $4000 'new child benefit' for new parents.
Facebook had originally planned to announce the changes last Monday as the standards are already in place for some teams.
The announcement was delayed following the sudden death of Sandberg's husband David Goldberg.
In another development Facebook has pushed deeper into the media business by crafting a deal with news publishers which allows the social network to deliver articles directly to readers and could reshape the news landscape.
The long-anticipated move by Facebook means it will host news items on its servers to give readers faster access.
The plan has been hotly debated in the news industry by those who argue it can help struggling media groups and others who say news organizations will lose control of their content to the social network.
The new feature called Instant Articles 'makes the reading experience as much as ten times faster than standard mobile web articles' Facebook said.
Sharing on Facebook's mobile app is growing but the average article takes about eight seconds to load.
Partners in the launch are The New York Times National Geographic BuzzFeed NBC The Atlantic The Guardian BBC News Spiegel and Bild Facebook said.
Facebook France chief Laurent Solly said that French media groups would also join the effort.
'It will be mostly dailies at the start but we are open to all news organizations' Solly said.
Facebook said publishers may sell ads in the articles and keep the revenue or use Facebook's ad network. Publishers will also be able to track traffic and other data of their content hosted by the social network.
Instant Articles will initially be available on the Facebook app for iPhone but Facebook is working to expand the platform.
A recent Pew Research Center report found some 30 percent of Americans get at least some of their news from Facebook.
But media groups have been struggling with the shift to digital from print both in terms of delivering relevant articles to readers and in getting ad revenue from online services.
Some in the news industry argue the plan gives Facebook too much control of the news.
'Overall I don't think it is a good idea' said Dan Kennedy a journalism professor at Northeastern University.
Kennedy said Facebook is not transparent about how it shows users news and the site can make changes that promote or demote content with a major impact on news organizations.
'When news organizations turn over a key part of their publishing platform to large corporation with its own agenda there are some real risks' Kennedy said.
Facebook's formula for structuring its news feed has long been a source of controversy with some arguing it creates an 'information bubble' that segregates readers into like-minded groups.
A study published last week by Facebook found this was not the case that the site's members were exposed to considerable 'cross-cutting' content but some analysts said the conclusions were debatable.