Posted on 11/29/2006 3:01:47 PM PST by GQuagmire
A Buzzards Bay man has filed a civil rights lawsuit against The Scotts Company, the lawn care giant, which fired him after a drug test showed nicotine in his urine, putting him in violation of a company policy forbidding employees to smoke on or off the job
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Thank you for the illustration.
BTW, just curiosity, mind: have YOU, personally, ever opened or run a company, any company (other than, say, a lemonade stand as a child)?
I don't accept the premise, at all. Evidently, you do. Excahnging one's labour for a wage in no effing way grants the employer any rights at all over one's otherwise lawful behaviour, specifically excepting general good order and productivity (sleeping on the job, clearly a no-no, for example), ESPECIALLY on one's own time.
If an employer should say, before the fact of employment, that you, the employee, can't do this and that and that and the other thing, whether verbally or by contract, then the (would-be) employee has no complaint. Accept the terms of offer, or don't take the position. THIS is the private company's privilege.
WHEN, however, such incursions occur after date of employment and without prior specification, the employer is in a purely false position, your nanny-statist protestations to the contrary.
Again, thanks so much (no sarcasm, not a bit) for letting us all know that you, personally, are (evidently) a disciple of Trotsky. This was one of his favoured hobby-horses to beat before EVEN the Sovs made him flee for his life.
Given his views, even his subsequent axe-murder doesn't seem too severe in retrospect.
If an employer wants to offer you that deal, and you take it, then that's what you're worth. Period. Employers are shoppers just like you are. If you have two equivalent 5lb bags of oranges next to each other, and one costs $5 and the other costs $3, which one will you buy?
Free markets work. If you don't like the deal, don't take it. It doesn't matter if you're talking about oranges or jobs, it's all about value.
If said description is made after that time, de facto as it were, I'd run the employer through every court in the nation, and cheerfully (and win, too).
Only the Regress gets to change the rules in the middle of the game, because Mr. Madison didn't think to put in a clause in the Constitution to stop them from doing so.
The rest of us live by any reasonable interpretation of law, and for better or worse, under what might be described as status quo ad hoc at the time of events.
Fine commentary. Well said!
Between the two of us, the only statist is the one arguing that companies should be prevented (by the government, presumably) from setting and changing the conditions under which they continue to employ a person.
You are also clearly more than a little unstable.
What law school taught you this?
I would consider suing them if I were you.
Trotsky took a different view (and, had he been alive in 1947, I've no doubt Orwell would have taken a pot or two at him, specifically; what an ass). Trotsky said on several occasions that a ''traitor's'' thoughts would be betrayed ultimately by his actions, and thus advocated ONLY the state control of citizens' actions.
I don't care if you quarrel. It's my company. I can change the rules in mid-stream. You're fired.
If said description is made after that time, de facto as it were, I'd run the employer through every court in the nation, and cheerfully (and win, too).
Wrongo. You're fired, and you don't get a penny. Challenge me in the courts. I'm the boss. I can change the rules anytime, for whatever reason (as long as it's not due to protected status discrimination).
Only the Regress gets to change the rules in the middle of the game, because Mr. Madison didn't think to put in a clause in the Constitution to stop them from doing so.
It's not a contract. It's employment-at-will. If I don't like you because you wear green, you're fired. If I don't like you because you cheer for the Denver Broncos, you're fired. It doesn't matter if I make that decision before you're hired, a week after you're hired, or ten years after you're hired. It's my company and my money. There's nothing you can do about it as long as being a green-wearing fan of the Denver Bronco's isn't a protected status.
In a republic (I only state this because it seems either to have eluded you, or you were never informed of it in the first place ... quite likely the latter since you describe yourself as a 'young' ''scholar'', just so given the state of ''education'' in the US over the past few decades), the citizen individually and the citizens generally are sovereign. They grant power to government, as a rule by formal agreement a la the Constitution or the old Roman 12 Tables.
Now, I've already observed that you're (unfortunately) too thick to grasp this principle. How did you evince this? By confusing state authority with a civil action, which is clearly the remedy this dismissed employee should seek. The government (in theory) doesn't decide civil actions; some number of one's fellow citizens do, correct? (That's rhetorical, of course it's correct, sheesh.)
Now, whether or not X number of citizens deciding a civil action, and who are empaneled to do so, have been infused with your particular and evidently self-preferred brand of Trotskyism, well...that's a throw of the dice. I daresay it varies by state, rather widely.
A civil action is only as powerful as the government that enforces it, and if you believe the government and courts should act together to restrict the freedom of individual businesses to hire and fire as they choose, you are far more statist than I.
Since you have called me a statist and Trotskyite, could you please point out where I have ever advocated that the government control any aspect of a person's life?
There is of course the counterbalancing consideration, at minimum one of ethics as well as pragmatism.
If Joe Smith, my employee, smokes really nasty cigars at home, not on the job, and I -- the owner outright of the company -- can't stand them and the residual stench, BUT, Joe Smith also is a highly productive employee, makes me lots of dollars from his work, and I never mentioned the stench before I hired him, then I at DEAD MINIMUM am both a hypocrite and a Trotskyite to punish him in any way or form for his smoking of cigars off-site.
If he and I had agreed to this before employment, you and I have no disagreement at all. If not, well, sorry, mate, but a unilateral changing of rules in what is necessarily a bilateral arrangement is nothing more than arbitary exercise of power to dictate personal behaviour.
Suggest you look up Leon Trotsky's (David Bernstein's) writings on the subject. He's quite thorough in his descriptions of the methods of control of private behaviour.
I daresay you have no education or real-world experience with the legalities of employment law.
I doubt that the guy suing will get very far. Mass law must allow the policy or it wouldn't have been implemented there.
Again, keep in mind this guy had 1 year notice and the offer to pay for any program he wanted to help him quit.
I don't like the policy even though it doesn't affect me. But in most states it is legal.
Miracle Gro and Scotts merged several years ago. The guy running the company is the son of the guy who invented Miracle Gro.
In a republic, the assumption is that a government will honour the decisions of its various sovereign parts. A republic of the Several States, as the Constitution phrases it, the United States (theoretically) honours the decisions of the assorted courts of the Several States, except in matters wherein the Constitution grants to either the Regress or to Article III courts the ability to supersede state courts' rulings.
The United States, in case you've so obviously missed it, which you have, has long since (in the 14th Amendment, duly ratified) barred large numbers of previously common discriminatory methods in hiring and firing, and in numerous other areas, and in (the grossly misapplied term) ''civil rights'', generally.
Do you take the position that, for instance, -- and this is not mentioned or even implied by the 14th Amendment -- that an employer can arbitrarily dismiss an employee for, say, having been a felon of some description, previous to employment? A pedophile, let's say, for the purposes of this discussion, one who has duly served his sentence (which was probably too short to start, but that's another subject)? Now, mind you, this is not refusing to grant employment, but said employee having been hired, the employer KNOWING at the time he/she/it was a pedophile and subsequently dismissing the employee because of the prior condition.
Do you REALLY take that position? If so, you are effectively arguing that EVERY employee be completely guiltless prior to employment, because standards such as this never, ever do anything but expand. Today, the pedophile; tomorrow, the jaywalker. Or, the smoker (btw, I do not smoke either cigarettes or cigars. I have done on occasion, and they taste quite foul, afaic).
I will adjust one previous comment, and apologise for the very minor misapplication of a term. Insofar as we neither of us acknowledge the State as our supreme master, you are only Trotskyite in manner; from a policy standpoint, you are a Shavian.
The net bottom line here, all descriptive terms aside, is the same one that even today most children understand without any formal instruction: in a 'fair' game, or -- generalising -- a ''fair'' society, you do NOT change the rules after the game begins.
You can call me a hypocrite anytime you like. It doesn't change the rules. I, as the employer, am going to make the rules. If I decide the profit from your effort doesn't jive with my dislike for you, for whatever reason, then I can fire you. If you don't like it, invest in your own company and make your own rules.
If he and I had agreed to this before employment, you and I have no disagreement at all. If not, well, sorry, mate, but a unilateral changing of rules in what is necessarily a bilateral arrangement is nothing more than arbitary exercise of power to dictate personal behaviour.
You just don't get it. It's my money, and I make the rules. As long as my rules fall within the law, you can't challenge them, no matter how much you disagree with my decision. I'm paying you for a service, and it's my money. If I don't like you, I can fire you, as long as I don't fire you for a reason (protected status) regulated by federal or state laws. If I decide to fire you because your sweater makes me angry, it's my right and my perrogative.
Suggest you look up Leon Trotsky's (David Bernstein's) writings on the subject. He's quite thorough in his descriptions of the methods of control of private behaviour.
You want me to read Trotsky? I suggest you start your own business.
Good post. I've been thinking as I have read this thread that every employee could probably be fired for one of a zillion reasons.
Eating at McDonalds or other fast food restaurants
Smoking
Drinking
Speeding
Getting a traffic ticket
Being overweight
Not excercising
Being Divorced
Not getting enough sleep
Being Gay
Being promiscuous
Eating meat
Not eating a perfectly balanced diet(who will judge)
To name just a few....this is a terrible way to go. I don't care if it is a private employer agreement. They can restrict his ability to smoke at work, but his private life is none of their damn business.
If tobacco were a banned substance, there would be no problem.
If people don't see this, they can bend over and kiss it good-bye!
I hope the guy wins. Fat non-smokers cost a lot more insurance wise than thin smokers. They get hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, cancer at high rates. They are discriminating against him specifically because he does something the company "doesn't like", while "allowing" other higher risk off-duty activities like unproteced gay sex. I hope his lawyer points this out.
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