noflynomore - No, I'm not familiar with Easyjets style of management, but I have noted the regular reference to their management and CEO as being mean-spirited.
To ban employees from taking food that is most likely going to be thrown away is mean-spirited in the extreme.
I'm coming from a position where I have employed a lot of people over a long period of time, and have employed up to 100 employees at the one time, but not in aviation.
Yes, control over employee pilfering is a big problem once your operation becomes sizeable - but company control procedures have to make allowances for petty pilfering, it goes on in every operation and is just a cost of doing business.
However, once pax have been served, and food is surplus, I see no reason why crew shouldn't be allowed access to the now-surplus food.
Hungry employees don't make for happy employees - and in the industries I've operated in, where employees are often working in remote locations, they are fed, and fed well - and often the good morale of an operation, and satisfactory performance by employees, hangs on the quality of the food supplied.
I note the judge in this case slammed Easyjet for its poor internal procedures and record-keeping, thus showing they are prepared to jump on minor infringements of company policy, but they are lax on putting clearly-outlined and defined procedures in place, to stop employee rorting.
If the lass in question had been filling a hamper with food to take home to family and friends - well, yes, that would definitely constitute a job-loss offence.
There's nothing more galling in the corporate arena than mean-spirited actions over food. Management and CEO's spend lavishly on corporate meals and entertainment functions - but deny their employees a bite when they're peckish?
Even during the depths of the Great Depression in the early 1930's, farm people would always provide a bite for hungry job seekers travelling the roads.
In my years operating in farming areas, a feed was nearly always on offer at virtually every farmhouse if you rolled up at mealtime, no matter if you weren't even an employee of the farmer.