Posted on 05/14/2005 8:42:05 AM PDT by SheLion
Hint: It has nothing to do with you.
I understand your point, but I don't see how it applies here.......this was an individual business owner who has made a choice in who he wishes to hire.
I don't like his policy, wouldn't do business with the company, and wouldn't work for him - however he has the perfect right to make what I consider a stupid decision.
I am not happy with calls for further legislative measures curtailing this right.
Uh, yes. Lets assume I am a Church and my employee gains a reputation for moonlighting as an X-rated porn star. Legal business. Or lets assume I am an attorney for wealthy clients who have serious privacy concerns and I have an employee who takes a part time job at a tell all newspaper. There are lost of reasons employers may have to desire limiting what their employees do outside of the job.
Amazing. You sit here and defend the concept of the free market for the corporation, but not for the individual? You have a very shallow understanding of how a free market is supposed to work, don't you? Let ya in a little secret: if it wasn't for individuals, corporations wouldn't exist. If you let them get away with this, they'll be in your bedroom, your car, tapping your phones and reading your mail. This is to private enterprise what he Patriot Act is to those who worry about a police state.
Perhaps business should pay more attention to their actual business than to my personal life. Maybe then my company can stop crying poverty to it's empoyees, and still report record profits in the WSJ.
I'm perfectly aware of why companies are in business, thank you. However, they are not in business to regulate people's behavior.
"You should see the hysteria I generate by walking around with an UNLIT cigarette."
Hehehe. I think I might pick up that habit!
That should have been "While still reporting record profits to the WSJ...." My apologies...
Ray, common sense and communism are two different things...Learn the difference...
My comapny can enforce dress regulations, speech regulations, prevent me from handing out political propaganda in the office. It requires me to obey all SEC regs, whether I agree with them or not. It can limit my internet access so that I cannot surf certian websites or tape my phone calls in the office, because they are either required to or because it's in their interest to do so.
However, when I'm not in the office, if I want to smoke, hand out anti-abortion flyers, start my own business, or breed rabbits in my basement, the company has not thing one to say about it.
Until a court or Congress decides hat tobacco is illegal or that it should be banned (like cocaine is), then I am free to smoke. If you wish to make it a term of employment, then give me an individual contract that spells out what I can and cannot do and give me the option of signing it. No one has done any of these things.
Until then, I own my own lungs and as long as I pay for my benefits (in my compnay, once you reach a certain pay grade, you are expected to pick up a significantly higher portion of the tab), my lungs and what I do with them is MY BUSINESS.
Now, let's extend the argument a little further. What do you do when your company has offices and operations in 8o countries around the world? If it's a non-smoking policy here, do we force the employees in Bombay or London to follow the same policy or is it just Americans that are expected to be tormented?
Until about 60 years ago my little home town in SE Arkansas was a "company town" where all real estate, housing stores etc were company owned. The company even hired and fired the ministers of the local churches. It controlled all activities of the personnel which lived in these houses and could kick you out for doing things it deemed inappropriate. Are we headed by to those days of unenlighened capitalism?
It's fine for an individual business owner to do that. Then, I guess if the habits or shortcomings of other groups, if you will, would be okay too? Fat people, people with diabetes, people with whatever if it costs him extra money, right?
I forgot though, you have to be tolerant of all the "PC" victim-illnesses, but you (not you, specifically --the collective) don't have to tolerant of smokers, even if they are willing to pay increased premiums.
The time is coming in this country when it will run out of the 'evil' habits, and the trouble with liberals and do-gooders is that they can't stop; they will have to stigmatize the next group of popular disdain --take heed fat people, it's already started on the airlines.
I'm not saying I like it - however, I also do not like the idea of the government taking away a business owners freedom of choice when it comes to who they wish to hire. I would rather be able to know a particular business owner isn't going to hire smokers up front - rather than the owner be forced to hire smokers.........or anything else for that matter.
The are equally valid arguements for both sides of this issue.....and I know them all because 10 years ago I was on the side in favor of laws that would prohibit hiring/firing based on outside legal activities.
Corporations are a natural outgrowth of the free market. They make the individual more free. This is basic Econ 101
I sometimes wonder what would happen if the deep pocket tobacco companies were to burn their fields in protest and leave the country. We'd have politicians, trial lawyers and the like jumping out of buildings, gnashing their teeth in agony and pulling their expensive hair plugs out. Just a thought.
"Corporations are a natural outgrowth of the free market. They make the individual more free. This is basic Econ 101"
"If you want to talk about behavior and habits that could put your health at risk, let's start a little list of things that under this sort of logic, should get you fired:"
How about horse riding? You can break your neck doing that, like Chris Reeve.
Or knitting - it can lead to RSI.
Or heck, even riding bicycles, either off-road, which is dangerous due to the possibility of running into solid objects, or on the road, due to traffic.
Excellent points.
Then again, I've spent 20 years programming and operating computers which has affected my eyesight, given repetitive stress injuries and makes me wanna tear my hair out. Not to mention the agita from sitting in endless meetings with anal-retentive folks, that's stressed me out big time on occasion.
He is nothing but a control freak!
Totally!! LOL he can freak off too.
Yeah, but the fire marshall would probably tear Johnson a new a-hole. :)
It's "PC" to fire smokers, Christians, and "fatties", but fire any other group and you're asking for a hate crime.
Unfortunately with the government's new BMI scale, many fit people will be declared either overweight or obese and therefore fired. Did you know that Tom Cruise and Will Smith are legally obese (according to the government's BMI)?
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