Well, I was going to write a comment about this being a dangerous proposition for employees, but an anonymous commenter on the site itself already made the point as eloquently as possible:
Beware the company town.
The workers who rent from the corporation, buy from the corporation, and depend on the corporation for all the niceties of life are at the mercy of the corporation.
In Spain, during the 1950's and even later, there were situations of semi-slavery that run like the following: landlord provided housing and food, and didn't charge the worker for anything until the end of the year, after the harvest. Then, the landlord would always find the worker living costs had totaled slightly more than what he had earned working for him, and thus the worker had to stay another year ... and the ghastly cycle would renew itself. The landlord would even have armed guards to "protect" the "village", and would not let anyone leave for their "protection", soviet style. Those bright enough had to run away in the middle of the night.
[EDIT: bottom line: don't lose track of what you really earn and what you really spend.]
I learned it from word of mouth from elders in Spain. Particularly from Vicens Ferrer from http://www.vferrer.net. You may ask him for bibliographic references, if he knows of any.
I don't believe large employers really care. The top management get enough benefits and pay to stay. They feel anything lower then the top management level is more like expendable cogs, replacable any time, so why bother going an extra mile to keep employees regardless of there worth.
OK, well that would not work in this country (Australia): 3 words: "Fringe Benefits Tax" - most likely would end up behind tax wise (definately will not be better off), and most definitely with a much greater compliance burden.
There is the same tax here in the United States. There was this one Subway Franchise that gave a free sandwich to each employee per shift. IRS was going to charge tax for that to each employee but the franchise owner decided to pay the taxes for all of the employees for that benefit, then he had to charge them .25c (next to free) for the sandwiches in the future so the employees could avoid the tax on the so called "benefit".
Here in .au its structured so that 99.9% of the time its just the same from a revenue perspective to the government as if they had paid the tax and used after tax (income) dollars.
So in that case, a sandwich of .25 would be seen as a fringe benefit as its well below the retail price (I think some discounting is allowed, but its only like 10% without attracting FBT).
Many families are struggling with rising food costs.
Not really. It seems like he thought...ah, I need a good reason for this besides the only reason, which is the tax dodge. But the tax dodge makes sense, and is the reason why companies like google give expensive lunches as partial compensation.
It's sort of amusing that the author seems to think that the idea of paying people "in kind" is somehow innovative on his part. No, it's definitely been done before. For instance, I owe my soul to the company store.
You can get excellent quality beef for 4 dollars a pound, chicken for 98 cents a pound, bananas at 50 cents a pound, milk at 3 dollars/gallon. And, if you have 1/8th of an acre and time to spare, you can grow whatever you need.
Flour is an ingrediant in almost all home-cooked foods, and it's practically free. People don't like to cook for themselves though...
Come on... The point is valid. No need to be pedantic. Basic salary in the US (even though it is lower then in many countries with similar GDP p/c) covers basic nutritional needs. You could probably extend that.
Though I would say that it says nothing about how much/little they are struggling. Paris Hilton would struggle on $10k per month.
I feel like this has been done before in the early to mid 1900s with the industrial revolution. It seems like there are a lot of benefits to this, but also a lot of problems.
For example, the company may be 'generous' in housing its employees, but the employees are de facto owned by the company when their housing, food, etc. are derived from their workplace.
Furthermore, what happens if the employee is fired or the company goes out of business?
Beware the company town.
The workers who rent from the corporation, buy from the corporation, and depend on the corporation for all the niceties of life are at the mercy of the corporation.