Posted on 12/02/2005 5:37:43 PM PST by blam
Man sacked after being caught smoking at home
By Kate Connolly in Berlin
(Filed: 03/12/2005)
A German company has sacked one of its employees for smoking at home after hiring a detective to catch him in the act.
Sandro Beier was dismissed from his £19,000-a-year job with a Berlin printing company after being photographed smoking in his back garden.
The company, Laserline, which runs a rigorous health and fitness programme for its 100 staff, said Mr Beier, 42, had "defrauded" it by lying about his smoking habits.
It claimed that Mr Beier had signed an agreement, renewable every month, in which he stated that he did not smoke. In return he received a monthly bonus of £68.
"Tip-offs from his fellow workers led us to believe Mr Beier was not sticking to the rules, so we sent a detective to follow him to find out the truth," said Babett Deuse, an operations and risk management supervisor at Laserline.
"The rules were he was to tell us if he smoked. He defrauded us of some 1,200 euros [£800] a year which is enough money for a family holiday. If someone steals from their company, it is normal that they are punished." The company introduced its radical no-smoking policy five years ago and abolished smoking areas last year. Two thirds of its staff are in the programme.
Laserline said its no-smoking incentives made economic sense, claiming that every full-time worker who smoked was losing an average of 12 work days a year in cigarette breaks. Smokers have to punch cards to clock their breaks.
Mr Beier's lawyer, Manfred Terhedebrügge, said his client was "knocked back" after six years' service.
He said he suspected that the company had used the smoking rules in order to find a way around Germany's extremely stringent employment dismissal laws which often inhibit employers from taking on new staff.
"It is extraordinary that in modern Germany it is possible for your employer to spy on you at home," Mr Terhedebrügge said.
At an employment tribunal in Berlin this week, which is due to conclude next month, Mr Beier admitted that he had smoked but only "when stressed", amounting to "maybe two or three cigarettes a year".
Mr Terhedebrügge said when he was caught on camera by the detective, his client was "experiencing a particularly stressful situation and hadn't even known what he was doing".
Mrs Deuse said Mr Beier had lied. "We're not normally interested in the private lives of our employees, but while others were sticking to the rules Mr Beier was flouting them. We had no choice but to sack him".
It's bullspit, no doubt, but hey, he signed up for it. Shouldn't have signed up for it if he wasn't going to do what he said he was gonna do.
The guy was taking money for not smoking.
This guy's in luck. You make more money off German unemployment than you do by working anyway.
Freedom to contract. This guy has no room to complain.
Dude, its called chew....
Was he a Jew or merely the 21st century evolution of anti-Jewery - the smoker........
Henry Ford would have been proud of this company.
He wasn't sacked for smoking, he was sacked for lying about it. Kind of like Bill Clinton & sex...he wasn't impeached for having sex, he was impeached for lying about it.
He just implied that they spy on their other employees while they are off duty too. Otherwise, how would they know they were sticking to the "rules"?
This is hard to believe. If I were him, I'd ask to see the video tape of the others, to substantiate that everyone else was investigated too, to make sure he was not singled out.
The man should not have signed the contract if he planned on smoking.
Still, what a man does in the privacy of his home, if it's not a crime, is his own business. Busybody businesses are just as bad as busybody government.
You vill not smok! Smok und ve vill fire you!
You vont to touch my monkey?
No I am not coming on to you, it's and old SNL skit. Remember? ha ha
I suspect someone used her nose. Often, you can smell smoke on a person, even if he wasn't wearing those clothes while smoking. If he ever smoked in his car, for example, any clothes he wore in the car would smell of smoke.
I suppose they were within their contractual rights to fire him. Maybe if he were a more desireable employee, they would just have made him pay back the nonsmoker bonus money.
I think that's the right observation. Only two thirds of the staff participate. He didn't have to.
If the other staff members ratted him out, I'd suggest he was probably smoking a lot more than three cigarettes a year.
Doesn't matter. Anyone can hide cig smoke. Hopefully, everyone signed up on the policy was investigated too. Otherwise, he was singled out. Any of the other employees could sneak a smoke outside their home. Should they not be investigated too?
Otherwise how could they make this statement?
Mrs Deuse said Mr Beier had lied. "We're not normally interested in the private lives of our employees, but while others were sticking to the rules Mr Beier was flouting them.
Isn't this crazy?
Yet anything that discourages smoking is a good thing: just this week a close relative of mine has been put in hospice -- he's dying of lung cancer, the result of 27 years of smoking.
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