Abuse of in kind payments

Abuse of non-salary benefits
Featherbedding
Substitution of goods for wages
Payment in kind

Nature

Payments in kind, especially when compulsory (workers being paid in part in the goods they produce, or workers being forced to purchase goods from company stores), may seriously restrict a worker's freedom to spend his wages. Deductions for defective work and disciplinary fines are two other means by which payments may be abused.

Fringe benefits also represent abuse of payments. Company expense accounts, dinners, travel expenses are all just sophisticated forms of wages in kind and thus are liable to abuse, though often in reverse, that is, the employee abusing the payments in kind offered by the employer.

Incidence

There were reports in 1993 of Latvian workers being paid with eggs, clothes and furniture as alternatives to money, due to the shortage of banknotes.

Claim

Abuse of payments in kind will not be resolved until workers are able to live settled lives with their families in homes of their own, buy food and other goods in shops of their own choosing, until they receive all their wages in cash, and until they themselves decide where and how to spend those wages.