Firing smokers

[question everything]

We have discussed this issue before, especially a few weeks ago, when "60 Minutes" reported.

Here is a story from the WSJ. I don't understand why they fire these employees. They can refuse to include them in their group health insurance - one more reason to move away from employer-provided insurance - or they can increase their premiums.

I really hope that such companies will get law suits on their hands that they won't know what hit them.

(BTW, I am not a smoker, but not many things rile me as an employers sticking their noses in the private affairs of their employees and this includes drug testing, when there is no reason to do so)




A Company's Threat: Quit Smoking or Leave

Scotts Miracle-Gro Joins Ranks Of Employers Trying to Cut Costs by Targeting Smokers
By ILAN BRAT
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 20, 2005; Page D1

Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. is taking its campaign to stamp out smoking among its workers to an unusual length: It's threatening to fire smokers beginning next fall. The threat represents the latest attempt by an employer to try to reduce health-care costs by targeting smokers. In January, four employees at Weyco Inc., a small medical-benefits administrator in Okemos, Mich., lost their jobs after they refused to be tested for tobacco use. Scotts, which has 5,300 U.S. workers, is one of the largest companies to have put an outright ban on smoking even off the job.

(snip)

Weyco, the medical-benefits administrator, announced a tobacco-free policy in Sept. 2003. It used a device similar to a breathalyzer to test for tobacco use. In January 2005, four of its 190 employees chose not to take the test and were forced to leave. Scotts offers to pay for smoking-cessation programs and products. But the October ultimatum "is way over the top by today's standards," said Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, a coalition of major corporations. "Most employers are still in the mode of 'You've got to have positive incentives.' "

Firing workers who won't stop smoking is illegal in the 30 states that have laws protecting smokers, according to the National Workrights Institute, a not-for-profit organization that focuses on human rights in the workplace. But elsewhere, unless workers fall in one of a few protected classifications defined by state and federal laws, employers have more leeway. Some lawyers said Scotts could be vulnerable to disability challenges if it fires people who smoke. "Once you start regulating outside conduct, the question is where do you stop?" says Marvin Gittler, an employment-law specialist and managing partner with Asher, Gittler, Greenfield & D'Alba Ltd. in Chicago.

(snip)


Write to Ilan Brat at [e-mail]

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113504483617427043.html (subscription)

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. First the smokers, then the diabetics, then the ones

with high blood pressure, then the fat ones, etc, etc, etc , . . .

[RoyGBiv]

Exactly ...

This has been my complaint all along about various incarnations of this kind of idea, and not just those things that are health related.

If a company, an employer, etc. has control over one thing you do in your private life, it has control over everything.

[niyad]

2. I am an allergic non-smoker, but I will gladly boycott ANY company that

introduces this stupid, invasive policy. although I don't use chemicals in my gardens, will be more than happy to tell them I am not using their products because of their stupidity.

[question everything]

5. Same here

Can't wait to get their flyer comes spring and to tell them what I think of them

[pilgrimm]

3. yeah, that's not cool

My mother smokes and she almost never takes a sick day. like one every couple years. She isn't offered health insurance either, but still...I just don't like these one size fits all policies.

My buddies employer gave $1.60 an hour raise to employees who quit. HE was smoking 2 packs a day and quit cold turkey with that offer.

[KT2000]

4. SCOTT'S?????

These people are responsible for poisoning millions of people with their products. They promote the use of known toxins in neighborhoods where pregnant women, elderly, the ill, and children live - knowing that their toxic products have never been safety tested for these groups of people. They allow their crap to be sold in stores where food is sold. They allow their crap products to expose retail workers to them for their entire shifts.

They are part of a cabal that fights regulation of their poisonous products - profits over health.

It is way past time that tobacco take the fall for all things toxic in our society. Companies like Scott are getting a free ride when they should be facing bans on their products.

[Trillo]

6. Perhaps if corporations (companies) wish to control

employees free time (note the "free"), then they should pay for 24 hours of compensation each day.

Just a thought.

[niyad]

7. that is an excellent thought!!

[Daphne08]

10. Good thought! n/t

[FlemingsGhost]

8. Haven't most states adopted an "at will" employment policy?

I suppose these workers should be glad to at least have gotten a warning.

Doesn't make it right, but until American workers stand up for themselves, this shit is perfectly legal ... and will continue.

[Pushed To The Left]

12. We need a ban on "at will" employment!

That would be one way to solve this problem. A federal ban would be excellent, but I think a ballot measure banning at will employment would get bi-partisan support in many states.

[Peace Patriot]

9. This is an outrageous violation of privacy, and could only happen in

BushWorld, where workers are slaves, owned by their employers. Subjecting employees to urine tests or breath tests is a violation of the 4th Amendment, which protects all American citizens against unlawful search and seizure. I frankly don't know how to reconcile this CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT--the LAW OF THE LAND--with the need to insure that a certain, very limited category of employees, such as airline pilots, are not intoxicated when they hold peoples' lives in their hands. I wonder if pilots would weigh in on this. What do pilots think of it? And do hospitals require urine tests of DOCTORS before they do brain or heart surgery??? I don't think so! So, what is the difference? Level of salary?

But SAFETY is the ONLY exception that I would even consider--which would be much like the exception to the 1st Amendment of "falsely crying 'fire' in a crowded theater." Endangerment of public safety. NOT personal heath habits!

As for ordinary employees--the vast majority--there is simply no question that such intrusion into their private lives should be forbidden. I can understand creating a smoke-free workplace. But employers have NO RIGHTS OVER THE BODIES OR PRIVATE LIVES OF THEIR EMPLOYEES! NONE! They have NO RIGHT to invade your body! They have no right to know what you do when you are not on their time clock.

And you can be sure that corporations do not pursue measures like this without long term plans to exclude MOST employees from health insurance for one reason or another--genetic diseases and defects, eating habits, weight, family history of heart disease, the number of beers you had last Saturday night, forgetting to put your seat belt on, living in a poor neighborhood, sleeping around, drinking too much coffee. You name it, they WILL exclude it, if this precedent is set.

Universal health care. NOW! Get money out of the mercy business!

[Pushed To The Left]

13. Amen!!

I agree with you 100%! Nobody should have the right to dictate what people do on their own time, whether it be the government or an employer.

[aquart]

11. Gosh. Where were the smokers who stood up for me

when I was forced out of office after office because tobacco gave me asthma attacks?

Let me think. Laughing. I believe they were laughing.

So they're finding life tough now?

You go be sympathetic. I'll watch the karma come into bloom.

[niyad]

14. did you notice that they are talking about firing workers who are smoking

OFF the job? what a person does on her/his own time is absolutely NONE of the employer's business, and they have no right to dictate personal matters.

I am truly sorry that you suffered asthma attacks, but aren't most work-places smoke-free these days?

[Maine-ah]

15. I work for a very small biz

5 people, including the two owners. all of us smoke. none of us have health insurance.