Posted on 02/25/2005 6:28:40 AM PST by T.Smith
Feb. 24 - Weyco may be one of the only large companies in the country that can boast not only a smoke-free workplace, but a smoke-free workforce. Achieving that status, however, didn’t come without a lot of effort—and controversy.
Howard Weyers, the founder and CEO of the Michigan-based health-benefits-management company, attracted a lot of media attention—and the ire of workers’ advocates—when he let go four employees recently after they refused to stop smoking. Civil-rights activists accused the company of discrimination, arguing that Weyers was punishing workers for engaging in a legal activity on their own time.
Weyers claimed that he gave his employees plenty of notice and opportunities and incentives to quit. “I gave them a little over 15 months to decide which is most important: my job or tobacco?” says Weyers.
That’s a question that more Americans may be asking themselves these days. Most companies already ban tobacco use in the workplace and more than a half dozen states and hundreds of cities have enacted laws to the same effect. Now, citing rising health-insurance costs and concerns about employees’ well-being, a growing number of companies are refusing to hire people who smoke, even if they do so on their own time and nowhere near their jobs. An estimated 6,000 employers no longer hire smokers, according to the National Workrights Institute, an affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Cool, then tomarrow, you should take a video camera to the office and document this!
If (IF) this is factual and not a lie on your part, then your company should give you a reward for exposing employees who are only working 50% of the time.
If our statement is false, then you should be fired!
Why? Because honesty from an employee is perhaps the most valuable commodity that the company has.
They're liars if they say this is about health insurance costs. All they would need to do is set everyone up on a HSA (health savings account), and if someone's lifestyle choices affected their healthcare costs, it would affect their bottom line and not the company's, plus the company and workers get to screw their HMO. It's a win win situation except for the HMO, and a loss for the HMO counts as a win!
What about gay sex? That's got to be even more risky, statistically.
Well, with firefighters, there's a little different situation. When a firefighter sues the city and department when he gets lung cancer after 25 years on the job, the city doesn't want to get sued for a workplace related hazard if the cancer actually came from smoking.
No, even that wouldn't work. If everyone paid their staff 24/7 for producing the same amount of goods, the price of those goods would just adjust themselves due to supply and demand in the same ratio (people with more money can pay more, plus there is 168/40 more labor cost built in to the products for sale). So the workers would still get screwed and have the same buying power (and much higher income taxes) with a much larger number of dollars. It might work OK if only a few companies did it, but not for the entire economy.
They weren't the same rules that were in place when he accepted the job. Sounds like the company didn't value HIM.
LOL. Your one of those people who expects us to tell the truth when the 'personallity test' asks us 'Have you ever told a lie to an employeer?'
They lie to us, we lie to them. Everybody knows it. It's how the corporate world works.
We are all working together to make a product and earn an income from it.
It does me no good to harm my employer, and it does the company no good to harm me as an employee. We are all in this together.
As a Software Engineer, all I wanted was royalties for my inventions. The laws in America only allow the company that paid my wages, the exclusive royalties.
Stock options (Warrent) was a legal method for me to obtain royalties for any profits that my software will earned for the company.
But there is no way to prove that it was the smoking that caused the lung cancer. Many people get lung cancer that aren't smokers.
We've got a slippery slope here...........and I don't know the solution to the problem.
If this company was ever stupid enough to enforce an anti-smoking policy, I would simply quit.
Their loss of business profits and stupidity. It would no longer be my problem.
However, out of revenge, I would have to do something.....
That's exactly the problem; there's no way to prove which exposure caused the cancer. So a non-smoking firefighter rule clarifies the issue. If the guy has lung cancer, it's likely because of exposure on the job. That's probably the only instance I've seen that I agree with.
For example, I don't agree with lower health insurance premiums as an excuse for this policy, especially with HSA's available.
I've got a hard time with excluding taxpayers from taxpayer funded jobs as long as they are capable of performing the duties and meet all requirements.
In the private sector it is one thing, but if I as a taxpayer am disqualified for a taxpayer funded job because I happen to use a legal product that produces a lot of taxfunding........I can't go along with it.
As to lower health insurance premiums I agree with you. And it really slaps this guy (Weyco) in the face because that was one of his claims about instituting the policy, yet one of the employees, in fact the one who had been there the longest, had never been part of the company insurance plan.
Well (atypically for me) I'm a little sympathetic to the municipalities on this one. I wouldn't want to get hit with a lawsuit for a hazardous work environment when the culprit may have been the guy's own cigarettes. Maybe the answer would be to do an epidemiological study of smoking vs. non-smoking firefighters. Then when a smoking firefighter gets lung cancer, reduce his award by the increased risk percentage found in the study. This might not be fair for any given individual, but it would be for the group of smokers as a whole. That way the city doesn't have to feel like they're paying for the guy's smoking as if it were a workplace hazard.
I didn't applaud then. I'm not applauding now.
That's an idea - but who would do the study? The municipality that would benefit from proving a higher risk? A group of smokers who want to be firefighters who would benefit from proving a lower risk?
I have an even fairer way.....government entities that will not hire smokers should forfeit tax proceeds from the purchase of tobacco products in the form of a rebate of taxes on those products.
Still not fair to the smokers who pay the normal taxes that all members of the public pay. That approach gives back only the taxes specifically related to smoking, not all taxes paid by smokers (or the percentage of same that could be considered proportional to the opportunity to be employed by the F.D.).
Don't have a problem with how he wants to operate his company, but I do have a problem with him infringing on my right to what I can or cannot do on my off time.
You're rights are not infringed. Do whatever you want on your free time. The business owner can hire or fire anyone he or she chooses. If you want to work for a company you have to meet their requirements. Likewise, if you want to work for a company it has to meet your requirements. You chose where to work. A company choose who to hire. It's by mutual agreement that employment happens. They are not forced to hire you nor are you forced to work for any business. It's called free association.
I actually meant my comment as tongue-in-cheek.....
Other than illegal activity I can't condone discrimination of any taxpayer for employment by a government entity.
I'll ponder upon it over dinner, which is now on the table!!!
Ever think about that aspect?
Bon apetit!
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