With regard to staff benifits, not everyone in aviation maintenance gets these. I do, but then I regard myself as one of the lucky few who do. But if my employers could do it, they wouild remove this 'costly privilidge' and worry about lower staff morale later on. Remember that privilidges can be removed and they don't keep a roof over your head.
Just as a matter of interest, do any engineers from purely 3rd party maintenance organisations who subscribe to Pprune get any sort of reduction on air fares? When I had an interview with what became FLS, there were none to be had, but this was 1988! Have things changed there with regard to staff travel?