I 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

I 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.

It’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.

While 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?

Being 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.

"Meatspace Meeting Space Bans Meats In Spaces"

Ok, they're a private company, they can do what they want. If you don't like it, don't work there.

But, really......

A 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?

On 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.

It's obvious they are trying to save money, with the weirdest excuse they could find. Meat is the most expensive part of any meal.

> 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.

It'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.

As 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?

> 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.

> staff will not be able to expense any meals that include poultry, pork or red meat.

What about dolphin?

Hmmm in Sydney wework charges 850 per desk per month.

After paying rent, rice is the only option.

Is 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.

Probably 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.

Original source (w/o sound-on autoplay video): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-13/wework-te...

As 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).

Odd 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.

What's their position on plastic straws?

Is 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?

Just the annoyance of having to itemize a receipt _to that granularity_ would annoy me enough to quit working at a company like that.

"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?

If 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."

> 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.

No Taco Bell was harmed in the making of this policy.

Meat 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.

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I think the market will force them to rethink their decision, and rightfully so

This is completely unenforceable.

Just claim that you ordered the dish without meat.

They pay their employees like shit to start, no surprise here.

Will WeLive dorms also be made meat-free?

Feel like this is just gonna cause so many bike shredding arguments internally it's not really worth it.

Seems like a breach of contract to me.

Easy, stay away from that company.

As long as chicken and fish are not meat then this is ok with me. :)

This 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).

This 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.

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17524534

"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.

What's next? Telling you whom you can date? (HR: "We don't approve of someone with those political leanings")

If 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-...

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_1467...

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.

Nice. 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 ;)

sounds 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

> 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.

> “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.