File photo of colleagues exercising in the office. Some companies give employees incentives to exercise or lose weight. LONDON: The phrase “the nanny state” was coined in 1965 by Ian Macleod, a Tory member of parliament who was furious about the Labour government’s decision to introduce a 70 miles per hour speed limit.
Corporate nannies are doing what nannies always do - using a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. Corporate healthcare providers such as Vitality give employees incentives to exercise or lose weight. Employers provide their employees with healthy snacks - not too much salt or fat - in order to prevent them from gorging themselves into obesity. Some have rechristened their canteens “nutrition centres” to rub the point home.
The corporate headquarters of Meta, formerly Facebook, is seen in Menlo Park, California on Nov 09, 2022. is planning to build a 59-acre campus near its Menlo Park headquarters . Google pledged in 2019 to build thousands of homes near its Mountain View headquarters, both for its workers and to ease a regional housing crisis. Elon Musk also has plans to build a more modest town, Snailbrook, near Austin, Texas.
In the 19th century, the likes of Joseph Rowntree and William Lever provided their employees with welfare because the welfare state did not then exist. Mining companies had no choice but to construct company towns because they frequently operated in the middle of nowhere. Today’s companies are once more expanding their role either because the state is retreating or because it is becoming more dysfunctional.