Posted on 05/14/2005 8:42:05 AM PDT by SheLion
Firing Smokers - Reading Beyond the Headlines
Trend: You smoke? You're fired!
May 11, 2005
By Stephanie Armour
More companies are taking action against employees who smoke off-duty, and, in an extreme trend that some call troubling, some are now firing or banning the hiring of workers who light up even on their own time.
The outright bans raise new questions about how far companies can go in regulating workers' behavior when they are off the clock. The crackdown is coming in part as a way to curb soaring health care costs, but critics say companies are violating workers' privacy rights. The zero-tolerance policies are coming as more companies adopt smoke-free workplaces.
•Weyco, a medical benefits provider based in Okemos, Mich., this year banned employees from smoking on their own time. Employees must submit to random tests that detect if someone has smoked. They must also agree to searches of briefcases, purses or other belongings if company officials suspect tobacco or other banned substances have been brought on-site. Those who smoke may be suspended or fired.
About 20 employees have quit smoking under the policy, and a handful were fired after they opted out of the testing. "The main goal is to elevate the health status of our employees," says Gary Climes, chief financial officer.
•At Investors Property Management in Seattle, smokers are not hired. Employees who smoked before the ban was passed about two years ago are not fired; however, they can't get medical insurance through the company.
•Alaska Airlines has a no-smoking policy for employees, and new hires must submit to a urine test to prove they're tobacco-free.
"The debate has gone from where they can smoke to whether they can smoke," says Marshall Tanick, a Minneapolis-based employment lawyer.
Such bans are not legal everywhere: More than 20 states have passed laws that bar companies from discriminating against workers for lifestyle decisions.
There are other ways that companies are taking action against off-duty smoking, such as raising health care premiums for smokers.
Employers say it's about creating a healthy workforce. But it's also a bottom-line issue: Tobacco causes more than 440,000 deaths annually and results in more than $75 billion in direct medical costs a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Some smokers' rights groups are vowing legal action.
"These matters will be decided in the courts," says Redmond, Wash.-based Norman Kjono, with Forces, a smokers' rights group. "You're creating a class of unemployable citizens. It won't stand."
And legal experts fear companies will try to control other aspects of employees' off-duty lifestyle, a trend that is already happening. Some companies are firing, suspending or charging higher insurance premiums to workers who are overweight, have high cholesterol or participate in risky activities.
And overloaded courts are part of the problem with the high cost of insurance....thus the high costs of medical service and thus the high cost of doing business......period.
I agree. There is a hidden agenda in this if you ask me!
What logo is that?
That's nice, sonny.
I hope your plans don't have to change.
I agree, but I'm not sure it should be a law. We are already being legislated and adjudicated up the wazoo.
I was standing outside smoking, she saw me and said "You really shouldn't do that"
"Why? I like it."
"It's bad for you and rude to others"
"Do you drive to work?"
"What's that got to do with it?"
"Well, I walk to and from work. You people who commute do more damage than me smoking."
"No we don't"
"Sure you do. Tell you what, let's go to your car and run a hose from the tailpipe into the interior. You get in it and I'll stand outside. When you start the car, I'll light a cigarette. When I'm done smoking the cigarette, I'll go back into work but you won't because you'll be dead."
She hasn't talked to me since then.
As far as I'm concerned, if you own a car you have removed yourself from the "smoking argument".
My mistake - the logo I was thinking of is the Lung Association not the Cancer Society - so sorry.
But the lies are all the same I get confused sometimes :)
I thought I heard that junkies and alcoholics can't be fired because they are "Americans with Disabilities". I think it's time for the ACLU to get cigarette smokers categorized the same way.
I actually had a tablefull of folks try this with me in the SMOKING section of a restaurant (seems they couldn't see the big-screen TV from the non-smoking section). I promptly lit up.
I have offered a similar challenge to the anti-smoker nannies - it's funny not a single one of them has ever taken me up on it.
Well, if health insurance company's are so worried about people's health, why are they just singling out the smoker's? We all know that life involves a risk of some sort. Yet they continually bash the smoker's.
That's a good one. And kudo's for you for sticking up for your rights. She had a lot of nerve! None of her damn business!
Yes--remember well when McCain trotted out these same figures, along with the notions that smoking causes PREMATURE DEATH (?) and that second-hand smoke was a carcinogen. No one bothered to tell the senator that death was either always or never "premature" and that the second-hand-smoke claim included factory- and car-emissions, smog, fog, noxious fumes from burning, etc., etc., where actual cigarette smoke failed to reach even the 1% mark. Now--we discover that second-hand cigarette smoke accounted for ZERO deaths!
Yet to rely on the "lifestyle decisions" contention seems equally contemptible. Strange how these insurance companies won't improve the health of their work forces by demanding BEHAVIOR that prevents AIDS, "premature" pregnancies, abortions, suicides, and depression.
You hit the nail on the head. If health care costs were not so out of whack, this would not be an issue.
I too suspect that illegal aliens getting free health care has a whole lot to do with the ever increasing cost of health care. The higher it gets, the more companies will try to place lifestyle restrictions on their employees.
Its funny, I smoke, and have had many jobs where I had insurance. I never ended up using it much if at all, while I watched other non smoking employees run to the Dr every other day cus they had a cough or cold.
A couple of years ago there was a large group of us out for drinks and light supper. There were non smokers in our group but we were in the smoking section of the place. A table of folks came in, ordered drinks and promptly started complaining about the smoking at our table. The waitress and the manager explained it was the smoking section and they were quite welcome to adjourn to the adjacent non-smoking room.............that wasn't good enough for them. They then refused to pay for their drinks since their request was not met. At the suggestion of one of the non-smokers in our group we paid the tab just to get them out of there.
Of course that was well before nannies like that group got smoking banned in Delaware.
Strange how these insurance companies won't improve the health of their work forces by demanding BEHAVIOR that prevents AIDS, "premature" pregnancies, abortions, suicides, and depression.
The don't because the anti-smoker jihadist have convinced them that those things are all "caused" by smoking.........
As long as they don't make me wear green on Thursdays.
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