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WeWork Will No Longer Let Employees Expense Any Kind of Meat
- mreome 8y agoWhile I don't think this "forces" a vegetarian diet on the employees, it is placing the employees in a situation where their company is promoting a particular ideology/lifestyle/diet through financial motivation. Dining is generally reimbursed during business travel due to the (often significant) increased cost of having to exclusively dine out, so the option for the employee is to eat vegetarian or accept additional personal finance costs. (I would also question the feasibility of finding vegetarian options all the time, but that might be due to my work travel sometimes taking me to more rural areas). The question then becomes, is it acceptable for a business to use monetary incentive/disincentive to encourage lifestyle or ideological changes in it's employees?
- ravitation 8y agoIn this case exacerbated by the fact that said lifestyle or ideological change involves one of the bare necessities (since all of the "equivalent" examples I've seen do not).
- thedevilslawyer 8y ago"> bare necessities" That's highly debatable. A good part of the world lives completely fine even without this bare necessity.
- mreome 8y agoThe bare necessity here is food in general. An employee has to eat when on business trips, so they can't a avoid the issue. They either have to accept the financial loss, or accept the dietary change. There are of course alternatives to eating meat, but the real question is whether it's appropriate for a business to use financial disincentivis (effective pay reductions) to encourage lifestyle/idealogy change in their employees.
- pera 8y agoIf the "monetary incentive" is, in other words, to provide something for free to every employee then I don't see any inherent problem. What I do think is an actual problem is making an employee pay for any potential extra expenses during a business trip.
- mreome 8y agoI agree. I think there is only really an issue when it is a monetary 'disincentive', i.e. it's a situation where the employee is effectively being paid less then what was expected based on the work-pay agreement (both in terms of actual contract and social/industry norms). If it's a monetary 'incentive' then it's adding something in addition to what was expected. Also, it's an even bigger issue when the scale of the disincentive is largely a result of decisions outside the employees control. An employee often has limited control over when and how long a business trip may last. Basically, encouraging people with an additional 'perk' seems reasonable to me, but encouraging them with what amounts to a 'fine' is not.
- exabrial 8y agoOk, they're a private company, they can do what they want. If you don't like it, don't work there. But, really......
- minimaxir 8y agoNecessary, no, but it's thoughtful.
- meowface 8y agoLike it or not, this is the side of history that will eventually win out. In 50-100 years from now, expect this kind of arrangement to be very common with American companies.
- jp_sc 8y agoI believe sintetic meat will be the most common in 50-100 years, so I don't think so.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- meowface 8y agoMy statement is exclusionary of synthetic meat. I was referring to "real meat".
- nwah1 8y agoAnd not because of environmental concerns. But moral concerns. Something that is flagrantly immoral would be opposed regardless of environmental questions. That is important to note because it is not a simple question whether meat is net positive or net negative for the environment. It isn't even clear what it means if something is net positive for the environment. This is a moral issue, not an eco issue.
- meowface 8y agoI completely agree. The primary reason to not eat meat is that it's inherently unethical (factory farm or not). But a lot of people don't feel that way, so any argument that will persuade them to eat less (or no) meat works in my book.
- minimaxir 8y agoOriginal source (w/o sound-on autoplay video): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-13/wework-tells-employees-meat-is-permanently-off-the-company-menu https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-13/wework-te...
- Justin_K 8y agoThey pay their employees like shit to start, no surprise here.
- prepend 8y agoIt’s nice that companies are releasing these types of policies publicly so peopl can choose whether to work there. It’s sometimes hard to get a good bead in company culture due to reporting bias of people there or who left. Stuff like this will help companies and workers find each other. I worked for a company for a while before I learned their expense policy was really frustrating. $40 max expenses and their headquarters and work location was on Spear Street in San Francisco. They also wouldn’t allow any alcohol and required receipts for any expense. It wasn’t so onerous to make me quit, but it was annoying and kind of indicative of their philosophy on cost cutting. Had I known about this it would have changed the weighting on some other offers I didn’t take.
- watwut 8y agoYou expect the company to pay for your drinks? That sounds ridiculous to me and I am no abstinent.
- prepend 8y agoMy last firm did, but no, I don’t. But if I have a beer with dinner while traveling for work, yes, of course. My current employer has a per diem and doesn’t care.
- null000 8y agoIt's pretty normal when traveling on business or especially going out as a team or a meal with clients. I've yet to have a job as a software engineer that hasn't, although there's usually an implicit or explicit cap.
- skluck 8y agoI have family in other industries (auto, financial) and they look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them about the restrictions on per-diems and expense reports in Tech (no alcohol, exact receipts). For whatever reason, its very common in tech to not trust your employees to be responsible.
- ahelwer 8y agoNice. If you care at all about moral justifications for your own actions, eating meat is an extremely difficult position to defend. It even falls on the wrong side of the Kantian perfect/imperfect duty divide, since the default really is not eating meat, so eating meat is a positive action which must be justified. I think it's a great example of philosophy pointing out the absurdity of a (very) widely-practiced phenomenon. Of course, there's always the perpetual ethical get-out-of-jail-free card of doubting the existence of any finite set of values (articulated in our imprecise, incomplete, informal language) which could inform all our actions in this staggeringly-complex world, plus the impossibility-in-principle of living consistent with those values ;)
- maccio92 8y agoHow does that argument extend to animals that eat other animals? And why is the default defined as not eating meat?
- busterarm 8y agoThe common justification for this is the comparative anatomy argument that we're primates and primates don't eat meat. These same people have had their heads in the sand for the last 30 years, because it's been found that primates do quite commonly eat meat.
- elsyms 8y agoDefinitely not. The common justification for this is that we, as the most intelligent species on the planet, have developed a moral conscience. As such, it is unconscionable that we support the literal mass murder and ill-treatment of billions of animals each year when there are alternatives that require no suffering and no death.
- busterarm 8y agoParent Poster said: > the default You're talking about something else completely. There is no default morality. If morality is a choice to make then it is not a default behavior. I'm responding to the question asked while you're propping your moral choice above the observed natural behavior of other species. I didn't even begin to discuss the morality of eating meat.
- 1_800_UNICORN 8y agoOn one hand, this seems like a very heavy-handed move considering today's societal ubiquity of meat. On the other hand, I believe that in 100 years we'll look at today as the dark ages in terms of the scale of our industrial meat production. So, I'm cautiously curious to see if other companies follow suit or not.
- kozikow 8y agoI and a few of my past co-workers have been suspecting that the facilities team in a big tech company I used to work for had an evil genius plan to reduce costs: 1. Pick the most popular snack (e.g. nachos) 2. Replace it with less tasty alternative (e.g. kale chips) "for your health" 3. Consumption is a few times smaller 4. The company can claim they take better care of their workers and no one can accuse them of being stingy 5. Finance team high-fives each other
- Rjevski 8y agoI had the same thing at one of my previous gigs. We used to have (allegedly unhealthy) snacks all the time, then they had some kind of bullshit campaign where they would not restock the snacks for one month and donate the cost to the homeless (fair enough), but guess what happened at the end of that campaign - still no snacks.
- pera 8y agoThat could easily backfire though (healthier chips are usually much more expensive), specially because kale chips are delicious :)
- lylecubed 8y ago> specially because kale chips are delicious :) This is OT, but I'm curious: what do kale chips taste like to you? A little sweet? To me, they taste like lemon rind without the "lemony" taste. Just pure bitterness.
- pera 8y agoI guess there are many variants of kale chips, but never tried one that tasted particularly "lemony". They are indeed a bit bitter, but the ones I buy are mostly a fried something with lots of salt (yeah, like pretty much all chips). I do like its texture and more earthy/complex flavor, which I generally find more interesting than potato or tortilla chips alone.
- deleted 8y ago
- Animats 8y agoWill WeLive dorms also be made meat-free?
- stephengillie 8y agoOdd to see this paragraph in the middle - it has no relation to anything else in the article, and the 2 points don't relate to each other - beyond the theme of companies banning things: > American Airlines Group Inc. and Starbucks Corp. recently joined the chorus of companies pledging to phase out plastic straws and drink stirrers. And Southwest Airlines Co., in a bid to reduce allergy risk, said this week peanuts will no longer be available on flights starting Aug. 1. As far as I'm aware, meat-based meal options are available from both airlines and the restaurant.
- CodeTheInternet 8y agoI think they meant AA and *$ are looking to help the environemt.
- lozenge 8y agoIs anybody being flown to this summer camp? A couple hours on a plane can match a few months of meat-free lunches. Especially considering employees might partially compensate with their non-expensed meals.
- charmides 8y ago"A couple hours on a plane can match a few months of meat-free lunches." I think you are mistaken there. Maybe if you only care about CO2 emissions, but meat production is also incredibly wasteful on resources like water, and is at least objectionable from an animal welfare standpoint.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- everdev 8y agoDupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17524534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17524534
- Waterluvian 8y agoBeing a vegetarian is exactly as equal a choice of freedom as being an omnivore or carnivore. This feels wrong to push this lifestyle on people. Of course one can always just not do business with We Work.
- inertiatic 8y agoOnly exactly as equal a choice for the individual doing the eating. It's less of a choice for the other beings involved.
- lolsal 8y agoI'm curious about this mindset - it seems like you object to eating animals because they lack a choice. Do you have any problem with wild animals eating other wild animals (who presumably also have less of a choice)? I'm not trying to trick you or trap you, just genuinely curious.
- donutte 8y agoI’m genuinely curious: you ask if one has any problem. Do you mean to imply that you have zero problem with this? When you watch a big cat torture and eat a prey animal, do you not have any sense at all that maybe the prey would prefer that not to happen? Or that, all else being equal, if the tiger could eat something that doesn’t seem to mind being eaten, that would be at least as good for everyone? Like, obviously we can’t really do anything about that without killing all the cats, which we don’t really like any better, and even that would probably end up killing all the prey species too... so we’re kind of stuck with things this way. But — again, genuinely asking — does the intractability of that problem really force you, personally, to assign zero moral weight to the experience of animals? Or do you sincerely just... not care?
- lolsal 8y ago> Do you mean to imply that you have zero problem with this? I really do have zero problem with animals killing and consuming other animals. > When you watch a big cat torture and eat a prey animal, I don't think it's fair to say that a big cat 'tortures' a prey animal. I suspect it's practice. Torture to me requires intent that I don't think the big cat has. > do you not have any sense at all that maybe the prey would prefer that not to happen? I do have a sense that the prey does not want to die. What they want doesn't really matter though to the carnivore. > Or that, all else being equal, if the tiger could eat something that doesn’t seem to mind being eaten, that would be at least as good for everyone? If the world could exist in a different state that had less suffering, that might be good. Not sure what it would cost though. > But — again, genuinely asking — does the intractability of that problem really force you, personally, to assign zero moral weight to the experience of animals? I think you misunderstood me, or I failed to explain well. I don't see any moral problem with animals consuming other animals. Killing animals for no reason I would find morally wrong. Killing animals for food I find morally neutral. Reducing sufferring where possible is morally good (whether in raising the animal, or the mechanism of killing the animal), but is separate from actually killing the animal in my opinion. If you killed an animal painlessly, would there be any moral problem in consuming animals? > Or do you sincerely just... not care? I care immensely in making sure animals do not suffer needlessly. I care that animals are well taken care of while they are alive and that they are killed humanely and for a purpose. My livestock has, without question, healthier, more secure and more prolific lives than they would in the wild.
- kyledrake 8y agoI can't eat a lot of types of food due to allergies. Meat is one of the few things I still can eat without issue. Yes, there are actually people out there (hi, me!) that actually cannot eliminate certain foods from our diets without getting sick. This policy would prevent me from being able to work at that company, for recognized medical health reasons, because I would not be able to do legitimate expenses of food related to travel, nor would I be able to eat probably anything during the "summer camp". I also have serious concerns about letting companies have moral opinions about paying for choices you make for your own health, for example with health insurance, and considering the current supreme court situation, maybe you should too.
- jlarocco 8y agoI guess I missed how anybody being "forced" to do anything. Their employees are still free to buy all the meat they want.
- juancn 8y agoThey're forced for example in the context of a business trip.
- jlarocco 8y agoNo they're not. Every company has limitations and provisions on what they'll expense on business trips, and I don't see how this is any different.
- tedunangst 8y agoCompanies used to have one hotel room per trip limitations, too, and if the woman didn't want to stay with a man she could always pay for her own room.
- jlarocco 8y agoAnd they also used to let everybody smoke cigarettes inside at their desks. Times change.
- PKop 8y agoThis is the anti-humanistic mindset that prioritizes "no impact" on nature above all else, instead of prioritizing human well being / human flourishing, which itself would account for environmental stewardship, but not to the level of sacrificing health to avoid eating animals (the healthiest option).
- hnaccy 8y agoWhy is speciesism acceptable but not racism?
- PKop 8y agoYou certainly don't feel this way in principle, just in degree. Do you swat at mosquitos or flies when they bite you? Explain to me how you think different races compare to each other like a human compares to a cow? We are superior to the cow in so many ways... is that your opinion of races? I think it is immoral to not hold humans in higher regard than animals, and do what is necessary to prioritize the well being of animals above humans where there is a choice to be made. Also, I am absolutely in favor of treating animals as humanely as possible... though I won't go so far as to not eat them. Maybe some group of humans will evolve over time to thrive without eating animals... but we haven't so far.
- CuriouslyC 8y agoYou are superior to a cow in so many ways, according to you, based on your criteria. The nazis thought they were superior to jews in so many ways, according to them, based on their criteria. One is just as objectively true as the other.
- PKop 8y agoLet's just leave it to "power". We are immensely more powerful than the cow, seeing as they aren't having any debates about whether they should eat us or not, and can't do anything to stop whether we want to eat them.. it is simply our choice to do so or not. I think that's pretty objective.
- db48x 8y agoSeems like a breach of contract to me.
- nodesocket 8y ago> that staff will not be able to expense any meals that include poultry, pork or red meat That is absurd. Imagine the opposite (a company only allowed expensing meat meals) and the amount of blowback, PR nightmare, and internet outrage. The hypocrisy continues.
- nkrisc 8y agoWhat exactly is the hypocrisy? Eating only meat is a very restricted and strange diet while excluding only meat can be a perfectly healthy diet. You're trying to make these equal opposites but they're not. Sort of like how not serving alcohol is acceptable but serving only alcohol (not even water) would be outrageous.
- nodesocket 8y agoThe fact that they are limiting people's choices and free will to eat meat and write-off (financial incentive) is the core problem.
- nkrisc 8y agoNo one's stopping anyone from eating meat. They're just choosing to not serve it. I'm sure you could bring some jerky if you really had to have meat.
- mikeash 8y agoThey’re not limiting people’s choices, they’re just limiting what they want to pay for. It’s not like they’re threatening to fire anyone who eats meat on their own. I don’t see the problem here. Lots of companies don’t buy their employees food at all. (And I say this as a meat eater who would definitely be affected by this change.)
- grahamburger 8y agoThe biggest issue for me would be getting reimbursed for travel expenses. True that some companies don't buy food for their employees at all but I definitely expect to be fed while traveling for the company, and I would definitely be finding a new place to work if I couldn't eat meat while traveling.
- VBprogrammer 8y agoIf a company I worked for introduced that I think my response would be subterfuge. "Hey buddy, I'll have the steak but can you do me a favour and put 2 beetroot and feta tarts on the bill instead."
- charmides 8y agoGotcha. By "subterfuge", I assume you meant "risk my employment by committing reimbursement fraud".
- proofbygazing 8y ago> committing reimbursement fraud lol, nobody takes reimbursements this seriously
- charmides 8y agoYes, people do. What OP described is called fraud and people get terminated for fraud all the time.
- VBprogrammer 8y agoOne has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust policy.
- charmides 8y agoYou can quit your job if hurting animals and harming the environment is so important to you.
- VBprogrammer 8y agoI care about companies not making moral judgements on behalf of their employees. I guess this particular restriction aligns with your morality closely enough that you are happy to give it a pass. What if instead, a company morally objected to halal slaughter and refused to reimburse employees for halal meals? What if they decided coffee production was too likely to have involved child labour and so that's off the list too. Surgery deserts make people fat and can lead to diabities, can't go paying for that either. For what it's worth 3 of my sister's are vegan. My mother has been vegetarian since the age of 9. So it's fair to say I've eaten my fair share of meat free meals. I think as a company there are a whole bunch of things you could do to promote vegetarianism without alienativing 90% of the population. An easy one would be offering a similar range of vegetarian alternatives as they do normal meals.
- mkempe 8y ago"The company estimates that the policy will save 445.1m pounds of CO2 emissions ... by 2023." That's 202,000 kt over a 5-year plan. Global fuel-based emissions in 2015: 36,061,710 kt CO2. In other words, they think they are so important as to "save" about 0.1% of global CO2 annually just by refusing to include meat in the menu of their own events and employee-expensed meals. I doubt the magnitude of their estimates. [added] For a sense of scale, WeWork has about 2,000 employees.
- ivankirigin 8y agoLet alone that lower demand might lower price and increase consumption from others, keeping net meat production the same.
- stvswn 8y agoAlso, if a group of urban westerners WERE to stop eating such a large quantity of meat en masse, it would have the effect of lowering the price of meat and not the effect of simply reducing the meat eaten in the world. Most of that meat will just get bought by others for a slightly cheaper price. Making protein cheaper for poorer people in the world would arguably be the best outcome of this experiment if the magnitude were anything close to their estimates.
- jlebar 8y ago> Also, if a group of urban westerners WERE to stop eating such a large quantity of meat en masse, it would have the effect of lowering the price of meat and not the effect of simply reducing the meat eaten in the world. This is equivalent to claiming that demand for meat is purely elastic and that the market for meat is frictionless with respect to shipping worldwide. What evidence do you have for these claims?
- proofbygazing 8y agoYou're right to consider the marginal effect that this might have on the purchasing habits of meat eaters, but you're wrong to ignore the marginal effect that the fall in prices will have on meat producers. A fall in price will always reduce the quantity supplied, ceteris paribus.
- timavr 8y agoHmmm in Sydney wework charges 850 per desk per month. After paying rent, rice is the only option.
- teaneedz 8y agoIt's funny to observe the criticism on a technical forum that should be in tune with the data. WeWork is setting a policy that is on the right side of history—for animals and the environment. I didn't see a lot of criticism on Starbucks straw decision. However, when the cost is a sacrifice closer to home, even when logic doesn't support the whining, so many try to find fault with a company decision that is net positive.
- ChickeNES 8y ago>I didn't see a lot of criticism on Starbucks straw decision. There's been plenty https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/11/opinions/starbucks-plastic-draw-hurts-disabled-like-me-blake/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/11/opinions/starbucks-plastic-dr...
- teaneedz 8y agoOk I see one article here that I still disagree with. Starbucks says they will work on this scenario and what prevents one from bringing their own straw if it's a disability issue? I think a solution here is possible while still protecting the environment and animals.
- charmides 8y agoIt's the do-gooder derogation effect: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550611415695 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550611415695 https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-love-and-war/201706/why-some-people-resent-do-gooders https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-love-and-war/2017... "But what was especially interesting was that those who viewed vegetarians more negatively were also more likely to expect that vegetarians would view them negatively, suggesting that a fear of moral reproach might underlie negative views of vegetarians. Supporting this idea, when the threat of moral reproach was experimentally manipulated, the researchers found that it increased negative evaluations of vegetarians."
- drcharris 8y agoHere's some criticism. https://reason.com/blog/2018/07/12/starbucks-straw-ban-will-see-the-company https://reason.com/blog/2018/07/12/starbucks-straw-ban-will-... I hope there's more to Starbucks' plan than this, and that they've got a better lid in the works.
- pcunite 8y ago"New research indicates that avoiding meat is one of the biggest things an individual can do to reduce their personal environmental impact," said McKelvey in the memo, "even more than switching to a hybrid car." What research?
- donalhunt 8y agoHere's one example from the European Commission: http://ipts.jrc.ec.europa.eu/publications/pub.cfm?id=2359 http://ipts.jrc.ec.europa.eu/publications/pub.cfm?id=2359 the tl;dr is that 2% of overall environmental impact in the EU27 could reduced by switching to a Mediterranean style diet (reduced red meat but not 100% non-meat diet). And PNAS have another study which used data covering 66% of the global population: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/11/28/1711889114 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/11/28/1711889114
- user5994461 8y agoIt's obvious they are trying to save money, with the weirdest excuse they could find. Meat is the most expensive part of any meal.
- watwut 8y agoEating vegetarian is more expensive if you want to feel full and satiated in the end.
- throwaway426079 8y agoCould you expand on that? I'm a lifelong vegetarian so I don't have a frame of reference for how satiated a meat eater feels. I wonder what I'm missing.
- chc 8y agoI think you are drastically overestimating the cost of legumes.
- nAwYz 8y agoCould you point me to research regarding this? It sounds pretty anecdotal
- glass_of_water 8y agoIt probably depends on what you make. Nuts and store-bought seitan are indeed quite expensive, but lentils and legumes are quite cheap. Where I live (major US city), tofu is only $1 a pack.
- sarreph 8y agoI spent all my life an omnivore, until the last two years I became vegetarian; 6 of those months vegan. I’m inclined to agree with you if you meant that a ‘satiated’ vegan diet is more expensive, because often the (lower demand / higher price) raw ingredients to make meals from scratch are more niche and varied. However, once you throw (principally) dairy into the mix, including mass-market meat substitutes (such as Quorn which often contains dairy derivatives), your options expand to the point where it is easy to a) just drop the meat and increase veg. intake with supplemented dairy from common dishes or b) replace the meat with a price-competitive meat substitute. If you did indeed mean vegetarianism in general then I’m keen to know why you think it is more expensive. I’m with other commenters here that this is a weird cost-saving measure from WW, and that dietary choices should not be imposed on people like this (whilst acknowledging WW is a private company and can do whatever they want—- it’s just a strange way to force it on people IMO)
- tedunangst 8y ago> staff will not be able to expense any meals that include poultry, pork or red meat. What about dolphin?
- gamblor956 8y agoLike most fake vegetarians, the policy apparently does not include any aquatic creatures like fish, squid, whales, or dolphins...even though the latter two are intelligent mammals with more capacity to feel pain than any type of poultry.
- underbluewaters 8y agoI really don't understand the moral argument for vegetarianism that excludes seafood. There are plenty of fish and marine invertebrates that are as smart/sentient/feeling as a chicken or cow. In many cases the environmental impact of their take is also much worse.
- bunderbunder 8y agoIt's also already illegal to eat the latter two in the country in which WeWork operates.
- tptacek 8y agoWeWork operates in Tokyo as well.
- tzs 8y agoSquid are pretty smart, too, so probably should be included if one is using intelligence as a grounds for deciding what is food.
- AdamM12 8y agoAlligator might be an end around also :)
- pkaye 8y ago> co-founder Miguel McKelvey said the firm’s upcoming internal “Summer Camp” retreat would offer no meat options for attendees. Maybe if they care about the environment perhaps they should skip the summer camp retreat and donate the money to charity? It certainly is not an essential thing to be doing.
- busterarm 8y agoTaco Thursdays were the _ONLY_ good reason to work at a WeWork location (Unless you are trying to get paid to be an alcoholic).
- mhb 8y agoWhat's their position on plastic straws?
- koala_man 8y agoIs this any weirder than how a lot of companies let employees charge their personal electric vehicles for free, but won't let you expense personal gasoline?
- downrightmike 8y agoThe average cost per mile for an electric is about 8 cents, gasoline is about 16 cents. https://avt.inl.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/fsev/costs.pdf https://avt.inl.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/fsev/costs.pdf
- koala_man 8y agoNot sure what you're getting at.
- J5892 8y agoIt's a hell of a lot easier to install a charger in a parking lot than it is to install a gas station. Also, there may be perks/subsidies offered by the local government for installing EV chargers.
- koala_man 8y agoYou don't need an on-site gas station to let people expense gas. It's actually the opposite: employees generally expense things because they cannot get them on-site.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- proofbygazing 8y agoDefinitely weirder. There is well-established precedent for expensing food, which matters. Also, food is a bare-necessity for staying alive while traveling on your company's behalf, so manipulating people's options there is bound to produce blowback.
- ArtWomb 8y ago"Meatspace Meeting Space Bans Meats In Spaces"
- ourmandave 8y agoNo Taco Bell was harmed in the making of this policy.
- curo 8y agoA lot of comments seem to be missing the facts: - WeWork isn't forcing employees to be vegetarian (it's not like a hiring requirement) - most companies have restrictions and rules surrounding their expensing - WeWork has decided they won't reimburse meat (employees can still buy meat) Should we force WeWork leadership, despite their rights to hold moral positions, to pay for something they don't want to pay for?
- temp54679680544 8y agoYes, they should be forced to pay for the things normally required of an employer. Including reasonable meals during business travel. The individual employee can choose on their own to be vegan or vegetarian, or to eat meat. Why should the individual rights of the employee be surpassed by the rights of the powerful employer?
- curo 8y agoIf you mean "rights" in a legal context, nowhere does an employee have a right to be reimbursed. The closest governing law here is fair employment, and this isn't anywhere close to that. edit: so long as work-related expenses doesn't sum out to a minimum wage violation
- temp54679680544 8y agoI meant it in the sense of the right to choose something as basic as what they eat while traveling. This is an insane overreach of the employer/employee relationship, and the only reason it is getting a pass here is because the "right" kind of politics are behind it.
- user5994461 8y ago>>> nowhere does an employee have a right to be reimbursed Actually, there is. There are rules on expenses and meal. Probably not in most of the USA but the rest of the world is a thing.
- jhayward 8y ago
- vfc1 8y agoMeat has an horrific environmental impact, so i can see why a socially conscious company would not want to associate itself to that. Notice that employees are still free to eat whatever they want, its just that the company will not pay for ecologically unsustainable meals. So the freedeom of choice of the employees is unchanged, they can still go out and grab a burguer but its out of their own pocket.
- proofbygazing 8y agoThat's the same as fining people for practicing their religion and then saying that their freedom of religion is unchanged, they just have to pay more to do it. Of course this affects employee choices, to think otherwise is obtuse.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- danmg 8y agoThis is completely unenforceable. Just claim that you ordered the dish without meat.
- bonesmoses 8y agoJust the annoyance of having to itemize a receipt _to that granularity_ would annoy me enough to quit working at a company like that.
- scott00 8y agoAs a business decision this seems incredibly odd. Being vegetarian or supporting vegetarianism does not seem like it would have disproportionate representation among either their target clientele or their target employees. As such it seems to me it would have minor negative effect on their perception by clients, and moderately negative impact on their perception by employees. I don't see why they would risk that for a cause entirely unconnected to their business, for which there are many less controversial ways to make an impact (energy efficiency in their buildings, commitment to purchase carbon free energy, etc).
- munificent 8y ago> I don't see why they would risk that for a cause entirely unconnected to their business Maybe they just really believe in it.
- proofbygazing 8y agoWell then it seems like starting an alternative to PETA would be a better use of management's time and efforts than running a real estate REIT that just has a vegetarian-friendly per diem policy. Of course, they won't do that, because they actually just care about making money and aren't really worried about this stuff. So I'm still puzzled.
- cjbprime 8y ago> In an email to employees this week outlining the new policy, co-founder Miguel McKelvey said the firm’s upcoming internal "Summer Camp" retreat would offer no meat options for attendees. Unlike some commenters, I'm okay with this! But the carbon cost of flying thousands of their employees on transatlantic return flights to the UK for this Summer Camp will be orders of magnitude greater than the carbon cost of any food choices, so it seems like an insincere concern.
- fulafel 8y agoYou can't fix everything at once. Whataboutism, etc.
- cjbprime 8y agoI thought about this some, and don't agree that this is whataboutism, because there's no change of topic. The environmental impact of WeWork's business decisions is supposed to be the topic. But the impact of massive transatlantic air travel gets a pass, and the far lesser impact of meat-eating doesn't. I think it's legitimate to ask whether someone's being consistent or sincere in their commitment to Cause X when they're decrying Thing X while (somewhat uniquely!) performing a Thing Y that does much more to hurt Cause X than Thing X does, you know?
- fulafel 8y agoBut aren't nearly all individual actions to combat climate change or improve animal welfare like this? I think it's not hypocritical to take first steps that are easy, it's just tactics.
- AdamM12 8y agoFeel like this is just gonna cause so many bike shredding arguments internally it's not really worth it.
- qubax 8y agoIf this is what a founder of WeWork is focusing on, I can't wait til they IPO so I can short it. I doubt this company survives the next recession. As for livestock vs vegetation being better or worse for the environment, it isn't a contest. Farming is many times worse for the environment than raising animals. Has any of these useless journalists, CEOs and crazy vegans ever stepped on a farm? Do they understand what is involved in farming? To farm, you do your darnedest to pretty much wiped out all animals from insects to rabbits to coyotes to large herd animals to protect your farm. And if the world were to go vegan, we'd have to cut down every rich forest ( amazon to the jungles of southeast asia and africa ) to provide farmland for vegetables. Whereas wheat, soy and corn that we feed livestock can grow in harsher temperatures, most vegetables we eat cannot. Also goats, pigs, etc can forage on weed and other "pest" vegetation in harsh climates. Also, farming kills 1000 times more animal than raising livestock. These vegans are so insane that they think vegetables fall from the heavens like manna. Nope. An incredible amount of insects and small rodents/mammals are killed prior to planting and during harvest. That's right, every salad, every fruit and every meal that you eat contains some animal. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/but-not-simpler/i-hate-to-break-it-to-you-but-you-already-eat-bugs/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/but-not-simpler/i-hate-... I am so sick of the vegan nonsense. It's not based on fact, reality or common sense. It's just agenda pushing virtue signaling where people pretend to be morally superior for nothing. More animal lives perished for a vegans salad than a carnivore's steak. And a vegan eating a salad is actually eating more animals than a carnivore eating a steak. So morally speaking, a meat eater has the upper hand if you think all animal lives matter. But maybe we should listen to a dumb city dwelling vegan who has never set foot on a farm. Lets wipe out forests and cultivate the land for farming. We'll wipe tens of trillions of animals in the process. And that's before dousing the farmland and vegetation with pesticides, petrochemicals, etc. But vegan feels over reality right according to the lazy journalist and the agenda pushing CEOs and corporations. Or do cow, pig, chicken lives matter more than insect and small mammals? Are the thousands of lives lost for a single salad meal worth a single cow's life that could produce a thousand meals? Edit: Downvoted? I guess vegans don't like science. Maybe you are more of a huffpost crowd. https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/05/02/bugs-in-food_n_1467694.html https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/05/02/bugs-in-food_n_1467... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/11581770/Hair-aphids-and-bugs-the-horrifying-stuff-we-unwittingly-eat.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/11581770/Hair-aphid... Downvote all you want. Vegans eat more animals than a carnivore. In case you were wondering, insects are animals.
- sabarn01 8y agoThis seems like a Just don't work for that company issue. Some places don't reimburse travel meals at all and as long as I have a choice I wouldn't work for them.
- tracker1 8y agoAs a diabetic who is allergic to legumes... fuck you WeWork, I will never do business with you given a choice. I know eggs and fish are okay, but what were the eggs fed? It does matter. If it's a company event, will there be eggs and fish, or just soy products?
- siegecraft 8y agoI was wondering when someone would mention diabetes. I feel like this policy will add a few more diabetics to the population. Now if they wanted to be really revolutionary they could ban sweets/sugar from their reimbursement policies instead..
- tracker1 8y agoThe worse part, is sometimes I react to eggs/dairy (that are fed soy)... And, frankly not a huge fan of fish, which I could deal with. But there's really no way for me to get sufficient protein from vegetarian sources without getting too many carbs, and I'm not even sure there are complete vegetarian proteins without legumes.
- cimmanom 8y agoIt sounds like they're making exceptions for employees with religious or health needs that make this an undue burden.
- Markoff 8y agosounds like they are pushing Steve Jobs apple diet, worked out great treating his cancer once again thing which would be illegal in Europe, employer can't decide what kind of food they will reimburse me
- wchandler 8y agoEasy, stay away from that company.
- simonsarris 8y ago> “New research indicates that avoiding meat is one of the biggest things an individual can do to reduce their personal environmental impact,” said McKelvey in the memo I cannot imagine that scales - you cannot extrapolate from micro to macro here. No animals = no food for 7 billion people.[1] Definitely no vegetarian food without animals. Do vegetarians not know how grains and legumes are grown? How fertilizer and soil amendments are made? It would be incredibly destructive to the soil to use no animal products to grow 'vegetarian' food. Definitely impossible at scale, you'd just be strip mining the soil. On smaller scale farms the ideal is to give crop land a break by turning it into pasture for 1-2 years. A great way to "mulch" the crop leftovers (you don't eat the whole part of the corn plant, etc) is to use them as forage (cornstalk grazing). Seems really odd to shun the "meat" aspect when we really are "using every part of the buffalo." And a big part of our animal use is making food for sanctimonious vegetarians. [1] about half of the earth land surface is better suited to livestock farming than legumes/grains/other row crops. You know what grows well in cold, rocky New England soil? Pork, chicken, sheep, etc.
- sunstone 8y agoAs long as chicken and fish are not meat then this is ok with me. :)
- mcintyre1994 8y ago> In an email to employees this week outlining the new policy, co-founder Miguel McKelvey said the firm’s upcoming internal “Summer Camp” retreat would offer no meat options for attendees. Unless they have two events called Summer Camp, that's not an internal event, it's an event they're selling to their members as including the best hand picked Street food vendors in the UK. I imagine lots of people will be surprised that none of them sell meat if it's actually that event.
- proofbygazing 8y agoProbably a net-negative business move. This creates goodwill among vegetarians within the company, who will appreciate being part of this uniquely progressive organization. However, their lives will not actually change very much - they won't have to witness meat at company events, sure, but their travel lives will be the same - they will just order vegetarian, like usual. This creates ill-will among meat eaters at the company, who will want to eat burgers and pork chops and will not be able to do so on the company expense, like every other company allows. Unlike the vegetarians, they will be reminded of this not only at company events but also every time they get food while traveling, as they have to think through what they are allowed to eat and see all the meat options, knowing that WeWork is the reason they can't have them. The animosity outweighs the goodwill here by a large margin. Retention will suffer.
- chatnati 8y agoWhat's next? Telling you whom you can date? (HR: "We don't approve of someone with those political leanings")
- fareesh 8y agoI think the market will force them to rethink their decision, and rightfully so