I think cutting benefits would be more costly in terms of morale. The article mentioned that sun laid off 5000 people and suggested that they cut out the vitamin water instead. Well, if you assume that sun has around thirty thousand employees, and each drunk a bottle a week at a cost of a dollar a bottle, that works out 1.5 million a year. Assuming each employee costs sun an average of 200k, cutting snacks would have only saved 7 or 8 employees. Even if I was off by a factor of ten, sun would have still layed off 98% of the 5000. So cutting snack and firing 98% of 5000 would be viewed as more drastic by the company than just cutting 5000 people.
If you had 100 people and cutting snacks hurt their productivity, you could end up with a more deleterious effect than you might get cutting 3 or whatever. Pragmatism.
