Posted on 01/28/2005 11:08:33 AM PST by Eurotwit
Employers have recently tried every carrot they can think of — including cash incentives and iPods — to persuade employees to quit smoking. Now some are trying the stick.
Pointing to rising health costs and the oversized proportion of insurance claims attributed to smokers, some employers in California and around the country are refusing to hire applicants who smoke and, sometimes, firing employees who refuse to quit.
"Employers are realizing the majority of health costs are spent on a small minority of workers," says Bill Whitmer, chief executive of the Health Enhancement Research Organization, an employer and healthcare coalition in Birmingham, Ala.
(Excerpt) Read more at story.news.yahoo.com ...
Do you have "a day off with pay"? Who foots that cost? Do you have paid vacation? Who foots that benefit?
Look, I know what you're saying. The solution is don't expect or accept a "benefit" from an employer without expecting strings. An employee is hired for one reason and one reason ONLY. That's to make the employer a PROFIT.
Too bad it directly conflicts with the agenda of a lot of do-gooders out there. Oh my gosh, someone might actually choose to do something harmful to themselves! LOL
You are so right. Nazi's were much nicer than mean employers who don't want to waste their money on higher health care costs, office stench and lower productivity. All those nice Nazis did was put millions of people in gas chambers and kill them. Oh yeah, there's that starvation and torture thing too, but at least they didn't mind if they smoked their precious cigarettes.
Please tell me you are not comparing the miracle of birth and life itself to smoking filthy cigarettes that bring only death and misery to everyone that has the misfortune of becoming addicted to them.What I am comparing is the relevant cost - which is the supposed reasoning behind this control-freakish behavior.
The only drawback is the employees who don't mind because it doesn't affect them may want that "benefit". The employer is federally hamstrung from offering higher compensation for one employee over another. That's an entirely different horse.
It would make more sense to buy your own health insurance... you're not "married" to the employer that way. Get a deductible insurance, dirt cheap, and demand a salary increase in leiu. I've heard of too many horror stories of fellow programmers mysteriously being laid off after taking advantage of their health benefits.
Can I say, BINGO!?
"If employers are going to be paying the health insurance then they have the right to do this. Health insurance used to be a bonus incentive. It's now regarded as an entitlement. Beggars can't be choosers. Flame away."
Employers have the right to do this in the 21 states where state law does not prohibit it. In the 29 states where state law says that employers cannot do this, they will be punished if they try.
Michigan and California are among those 21 states.
Employers have the right to fire employees there for smoking off duty.
But then, of course, employees in those states, and every other state, have the right to organize themselves into unions while ON duty, and the employer cannot fire them for that.
So, if this has to come down to a battle of rights, I'd humbly suggest that employers are going to end up getting the bad end of the baseball bat here. Firing employees is a right if they are not doing something protected by law. Smoking at home is not protected by law. But organizing a union at work, on company time, IS protected by law.
And this is precisely the sort of petty and abusive behavior by employers, as it becomes widespread, that has the real potential to rejuvenate the union movement.
Is that what we want?
Sure, employers have a great number of rights to hire and fire. But no rights are unlimited. All rights are subject to limitation when they start being abused.
Firing people for smoking in their off-duty time, or being a tad overweight, is abusive. It pisses people off. Even people who haven't heard about it.
So, here we are, with nice momentum in the conservative revolution, and some jackass employers pull a stunt like this which is just BOUND to produce a nasty backlash.
Is that what we need?
These abusive employers need to be slapped down, hard and fast, or the People are going to get mad and start imposing more rules. With every right comes responsibility. Employers have been given tremendous latitude in hiring and firing. The democracy and the courts, and unions, can take those rights away and cut them back if the People get mad enough. And believe you me this sort of intervention in people's private lives is making a lot of people mad, now that it's out in the open.
This is a fight that we conservatives are not going to win, and trying to fight it is going to damage us.
So it's not a drawback to be fired instead?
People are going to feel entitled to these kinds of bennies when it's basically framed in that manner at the outset of employment. It may be a drawback to make everyone pay for insurance but so what? If health care isn't an entitlement for folks that smoke, or are obese, ect, then why should it be for those who are not? What's good for the goose should be good for the gander as well. Healthy individuals would enjoy a lower rate than employees that are not. Seems fair enough to me, and a lot fairer than singling out employees to be fired in such a manner. Not to mention being a heck of a lot cheaper for the employers who are supposedly concerned about the bottom line.
If they can get employees to die younger, would that not benefit the pension plans? It would leave more money in the accounts.
Yep, that's my perception, also. It seems to me the story about that insurance company who has given all their smokers the ultimatum to quit or be fired, originally stated that smokers would have to pay a $60/month surcharge for their insurance coverage - what's wrong with that approach? They claim that smokers cost their insurance more (although so do fat asses, women of child-bearing age, employees with children, likely homosexuals, etc, etc), so what not just ask them to cough up (no pun intended) the difference, if that's what they really care about? No sir, like you say, I think it's all about do-gooder control freaks (health fascists).
As a total aside.
Did you ever consider changing your monicker?
I gotta tell ya, I'm gettin' a real big kick out of this.
well, let's. are we going to let corporate fascism design the least costly person? How about a clone with no civil rights?
LOL. Whyever not? Hire a bunch of overweight gay smokers, and your pension plan funds would be swimming in cash!! Of course, then you would have to deal with a loss of institutional knowlege and the costs of constantly training new hires.
None of these articles can seem to state what the coercive employers are going to save by doing this. And this crap about smokers taking more time off... I've never noticed that, and I'd never heard that until the last couple of years, and I've never seen any studies that bear that out. I think it's a made up statistic.
It makes sense to me, anyway. It just kills me to hear these guys whining about the costs of premiums when they don't have to pay for it. They choose to do so, so imo, they should just write it off as one of the costs of getting employees. Grandfather in current hires if you're going to change policies on them, and only hire your "desirable" employees thereafter. If it turns out the new hires lied, you can fire them for that, but not have to deal with a PR mess for firing someone for doing something legal in their off-hours.
Older employees have some "built-in" drawbacks. Why should they have to be employed?
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