this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
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There's a lot of context we're missing here. For example this happens with my company and the reason is tax implications - if they provided "free money" that would be additional salary and taxed as such, whereas "free meals" are taxed completely differently. There could be completely legitimate reasons. Maybe if they let people use it for whatever purpose, the $25 would turn into $15 due to tax.
What I won't defend is firing people for this reason. I don't see how that can be ethically acceptable...
Yes, i though this, too, but usually companies address this by issueing vouchers that can be only be used for certain businesses or products. This makes sure, the expense shows up as food on the invoice. Nobody cares if employees find a loophole to buy non-food. The company issued food vouchers. That will do.
Every company I've worked for either gave us digital gift cards or, when I was a manager, let us charge meals specifically to our business credit card for a certain amount per month (team outings) without prior approval.
Exactly. If they abuse the benefit, withdraw the benefit.
If that is the case the Meta set themselves up for failure for some tax breaks and is taking it out on their employees.
No, they're using this as an excuse to cull the workforce.
In most orgs, this would merely result in losing access to the benefit.
It can be both, since the vouchers have existed for years and are only now getting scrutiny.
And with a normal org, they'd simply revoke the benefit and maybe take a penalty from the employee's future paychecks. Firing someone over such a small benefit is ridiculous and only makes sense if they're actively looking for ways to cut headcount w/o paying severance or unemployment.