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.
No flame here. As I see it, benefits offered by employers are enticements, not entitlements.
Increasingly, we are seeing that health insurance costs being shifted to the employee. As premiums increase, the costs will be borne by the worker. I believe that many health insurers "factor in" the numerous ills of the employee pool to set their rates. Employees do not have an entitlement to health insurance. Health insurance coverage is a benefit offered by the employer to recruit and keep employees.
Yes, philosophically you may be correct. But this is still liberal idiocy. The number of smokers is now so low, that this definitely falls into the category of wasted effort in pursuit of diminishing returns. Someone has way too much time on their hands - let me turn it around and say that whichever Sigma Black Belt or bean counter thought this one up should be fired for incompetence. There is so much low hanging fruit in terms of cost reduction - this is mouse nuts.
"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.
Gee whiz.. Well how about old people? Oh, that's right, I can't discriminate based on age. Well if you have ever had a chronic illness, cancer, diabetes, or any major surgeory guess what? You fired. I only want young healthy, thin, and come to think of it GOOD LOOKING people at my job. Ugly, fat, sick, and those that may become pregnant NEED NOT APPLY!