EK does not foot the bill for social costs. It comes off your salary. If you don't live in company accommodation you get the utilities allowance which gives you a salary you can directly compare with back home, where you pay your own housing costs. If you do live in company accommodation you don't get the allowance. The reason you can no longer move out and rent your own place is that the places they allocate to you cost less than the utilities allowance would be. For the benefit of those not familiar with the EK housing situation it is worth empahasising that you don't get a choice where you live and you cannot change it once it is allocated.
The only "social costs" EK have to meet is the cost of getting us to work and back (which is contractual or I'm pretty sure it would have gone by now) and our health insurance. I suppose they have the cost of our annual leave tickets- unless you are American and they have changed your destination. Even the cost of our families insurance is deducted from our salary.
I didn't read the article but please tell me MF was not complaining about how hard and expensive it is to run an airline in Dubai?
