It’s funny how yesterday’s science fiction or social satire can become today’s reality. Remember the cyberpunk novels of the '80s imagining the Internet…and a world ruled by Corporate Fascism. Welcome to the Brave New World, kiddies. You no longer have the right to privacy. Your personal life is owned by the Corporation. Rule under the thumb of Big Business is no better than rule under the thumb of Big Government. Right-wingers are too blinkered to see the evils of the former, while Left-wingers are too blinkered to see the evils of the latter. The hapless Individual is caught between Scylla and Charbydis.
Hobbes and yellowcartman,
If you are wondering about that, then check out how many states are DEPENDENT on tobacco bonds to pay their bills.
Big Tobacco pays out a whole lot of money to states, and some would go bankrupt if the tobacco companies went under…or more likley filed for chapter 11.
bergencapital.com/research/f … 0Bonds.htm
This explains a bit of the connection between states, big buyers of tobacco bonds and the companies. It is clearly in the states’ interests to keep people smoking.
a quote:
“Since bondholders (States) receive payments from four tobacco companies, the creditworthiness of the investment depends in large part, on the ability of these companies to keep selling cigarettes for another generation. Bond repayment hinges on the health of the U.S. tobacco industry and in particular the four cigarette companies that control over 90% of the U.S. market: Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds; Lowe’s Lorillard division, and Brown and Williamson, a division of British American Tobacco (BAT).”
To quote Milton Friedman, “Freedom to Choose.”
The employer has freedom to select and offer you the choice. You have the freedom to choose.
OOC
This is more of a history about the states reliance on Tobacco Bonds. It’s a negative article, from 2 years ago…and it’s sort of funny as they list Philip Morris at 30$ a share…and now it’s over 60$
The Great Tobacco Bond Scam
Richard Lehmann, Forbes/Lehmann Income Securities Investor, 04.09.03, 8:00 AM ET
forbes.com/2003/04/09/cz_rl_0408soapbox.html
"While cigarettes have proven to be bad for your health, it seems the government is going to extend this to your financial health as well. Or, at least, to the financial health of those investors who think the $246 billion 1998 Master Settlement Agreement reached by the states with the tobacco industry constitutes bondable collateral of predictable income. So far, 34 states and counties have launched some 44 municipal bond issues totaling $15.7 billion backed solely by their projected shares of the revenue they hope to receive under this agreement. Expect this volume of bonds to grow as more states and municipalities use this convenient way to close their budget deficits. Bond maturities run out as long as 2043 and carry ratings of as high as A1/A/A+ from the three rating agencies: Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch. "
[quote=“Yellow Cartman”]I know I’m jumping in this argument a little late but for the sake of discussion let me throw out this statement:
“It is hard to see how society has a strong interest in discouraging people from participating in legal activies under the law, such as smoking.”
What one is quickly faced with here is this conundrum: your livelihood or your giving up your legal right to do . What is then, freedom?[/quote]
I hear you, YC. It’s just that I’m not sure that this conundrum is all that uncommon. A person has the legal right to refuse to work weekends as well – but by choosing to exercise that right that person may lose his job if that job requires weekend work. I don’t think that any meaninful conception of freedom would include absolving an individual from responsibility for their choices.
“Ah, but refusing to work weekends is not like smoking, because refusing to work weekends affects your employer’s” comes the response…
Okay, however:
(a) there is certainly a case to be made that smoking affects your employer as well because she has to pay higher insurance premiums (a point that already has ample coverage in this thread – so I’ll leave it at that. obviously some don’t agree); and
(b) whether or not your employer had a good reason to fire you is not really relevant to the question of whether you had to give up your legal right to to XYZ in order to keep your job. In both cases, you had to do exactly that.
So, yes, I agree with you that having to give up my legal right to do XYZ sucks. But the bottom line is that I don’t have the legal rights to force another person to pay me in exchange for my labour.
Similarly, a kid who comes to my door-to-door offering to take out the garbage for $NT100/trip does not have the right to force me to pay him for his labour. Whether or not my refusal to pay him is reasonable is irrelevant.
If I do hire him (agreeing to pay him $100 every time he takes out the trash – and after a few months tell him that I’ll only continue to employe him if he agrees to dye his hair green, he cannot say [color=black]“But I have the legal right NOT to dye my hair green – you are forcing me to choose between my job and my natural-coloured hair!”[/color]
I’d tell him: [color=blue]“I’ve got good news for you son. You have the freedom to refuse and walk away.”[/color]
Do we have to wait for governments to state that smoking is an unjustifiable act? Often, it is the corporations and companies (that have the right to set their own policies that best adhire to their investment) that serve the people’s needs. Paying parents of an educational estabishment may want to ensure that their children don’t witness the option of smoking from their dearly admired teacher. Sounds fair. And the employer may find that addressing this need benefits the accounting books. Sounds fair too!
Sooner or later, we will here that governments of some countries have finally banned cigarette smoking because of the cost and health risks. Will there be the same pro-choice stand then?
An example of “an outlawed cancer”:
Let’s think about the countless laws waiting to be passed surrounding the democracy of the internet. Why was it such a problem to have spam? We did not “own” our e-mail boxes. Spam became a cancer within our electronic communication devices. But, it costs others money due to inconvienience, so first we encountered numerous anti-spamming devices provided by our e-mail providers, WAY before the law made it illegal (in some way shape or form). How did this issue become a major national bill within many governments? Maybe from the undeniable pleed pouring from the companies and corporations which (in some way: depending on the people who work and support these beliefs) suffer financial loss due to them. The law ended up supporting the long argument that reflected the view of many people.
Back to smoking. I am a smoker, I know it would not be wise to let my employers use such an excuse punish me, but only because I know it is a publicly unaccepted habit within my working environment. It is my right, I should not be discriminated against. But, I’m not ignorant to the wants and needs of an employer, or her/his relentless demands to show that she/he is on the job. The law may be slow, but are we going to wait a long time to for the law to eventually reflect the view of many people?
So, if what you do in your off time is not a concern to your employer…
then why should your employer pay higher insurance premiums to cover your more frequent illnesses…[/quote]
An employer isn’t required to provide health insurance to their employees. Health insurance is an added benefit, not a requirement.
So, if their concern is higher premiums, why don
[quote=“Vannyel”]Answering the questions about obesity…
[quote]Obesity had a significant but negative impact on work. Twenty-two percent of workers in the study were classified as obese, and 4.5 percent as severely obese. Obese employees reported more difficulty getting along with coworkers, while severely obese workers missed significantly more days of work.
Physical inactivity and obesity have well-known negative effects on health and health care costs. Ill health obviously leads to increased health costs because of absences from work. However, relatively little is known about how these risk factors affect indirect costs, including costs related to decreased productivity on the job.[/quote]
newswise.com/p/articles/view/502803/[/quote]
There was problably little doubt in the first place.
[quote=“Danimal”][quote=“Vannyel”]Answering the questions about obesity…
[quote]Obesity had a significant but negative impact on work. Twenty-two percent of workers in the study were classified as obese, and 4.5 percent as severely obese. Obese employees reported more difficulty getting along with coworkers, while severely obese workers missed significantly more days of work.
Physical inactivity and obesity have well-known negative effects on health and health care costs. Ill health obviously leads to increased health costs because of absences from work. However, relatively little is known about how these risk factors affect indirect costs, including costs related to decreased productivity on the job.[/quote]
newswise.com/p/articles/view/502803/[/quote]
There was problably little doubt in the first place.[/quote]
Not on my part, but then again, I like facts. My personal observations of coworkers doesn’t qualify as ‘facts’ for most. Either way lumping all smokers and all fat people together is dangerous ground for an argument.
My father was a functional alcoholic almost his entire life. He showed up to work the day they called the ambulance and took him in for an emergency triple by pass, yes, it cost the insurance company quite a bit of money but then again he paid in quite a few premiums before the surgery and hadn’t missed a day at work for years (decades actually).
As a smoker, I can say for a fact that the majority of my non-smoking coworkers have taken more sick days off in the last three years than I have. It proves nothing but it is an interesting example (at least to me).
The title of this thread is really bothering me “Fired for Smoking” - no, not at all.
[quote]Four workers in the United States have lost their jobs after refusing to take a test to see if they were smokers.
The four workers who refused to take the test left their jobs voluntarily, although a lawyer for Weyco confirmed the company was preparing to dismiss them. [/quote]
What they do at home, in their car, on the moon, in Taiwan, etc. isn’t even the point. The employer said “I’m testing for nicotine in your urine. If I find it you’re fired.” They said “we’re not taking your test. WE QUIT.”
He who has the gold makes the rules. Everything else is fluff.
OOC
That’s the attitude that pushes employees to create labor unions, and we all know how delightful those can be. Otherwise what you get is:
- Bosses who treat their employees like crap.
or - Employees that with specialized enough skills that they don’t have to take any crap.
I suppose it happens that employees with no union or any special skills are treated reasonably well but I have never seen it.
if they don’t like workers being less productive or taking more time off, then they should just fire ALL workers who are less productive or take more time off. that argument is pretty pointless since that would mean firing people with busy family lives who need to go home and take care of their kids.
i’ve worked with many smokers and non-smokers and have not witnessed any corrolation between smoking and productivity so i find that line of argument specious.
notice the owner has refused to fire smokers since 2003. i doubt he’s doing that because he thinks they MIGHT be less productive or take more time off.
if they don’t like paying more for health insurance for smokers, then make it company policy that the company will make the same net contributions to every employees health insurance and the employee has to make up the rest. a single young smoker would cost the firm less than a worker with a family in which one of his kids has a disease or an older worker who is much more likely to contract any of an assortment of diseases.
it’s obvious from the article that the owner(being a health nut) is specifically targetting smokers because he believes it’s an unhealthy habit. now he’s going to go after fat people. what’s next?
this isolated case doesn’t matter in and of itself, but if the precedent spreads to larger companies, i can see it being challenged successfully in court.
Let me make sure I understand your point clearly before responding to it. Are you saying that a company should hire people who are smokers or are obese and then only fire them if they take an extraordinarily large number of sick days? That sounds nice, but that may put the burden of proof on the employer every time he wants to dismiss someone for taking a large number of sick days due to lifestyle choices. I think it is quite difficult for an employer to dismiss an employee for taking too many sick days. My own experience with this is that as long as an employee gets a sick note from a doctor, perhaps stating the cause of absence as an upper respiratory infection but not actually addressing the cause of such chronic infections, the employer is in a very difficult position if they want to unload that employee for using too many sick days. They might have to prove case by individual case that an employee is frequently absent because of illnesses caused by lifestyle choices. That seems like a big pain in the ass and something that most employers would avoid if they could. Perhaps the best way to do that is to avoid hiring people who have made such lifestyle choices.
Two arguments against that. One, is there evidence showing that people with families are less productive? The second argument is that even if they are less productive, it would be against the general welfare of society if discrimination against those who engage in activities leading to the replenishment of the numbers of workers and taxpayers (namely, fucking and then having a child) were allowed.
I would hope that this would be the most reasonable and fair approach, but is it practical? To do this, those original folks who left rather than taking the smoking test may still have objected. In order to find those people who have higher risk factors and charge them accordingly for their insurance, the employer would still have to weed them all out. You are also dismissing, based only on your own experience, the notion that smokers are less productive because they take more sick days, sneak time away during the work day for a drag or are difficult people to work with because of nicotine withdrawal.
But the difference here is that the smoker has personally chosen to engage in an activity that may drive up costs. The dependent or older worker with a disease has not freely chosen to have a disease that may drive up costs. If an employer or insurer can choose to reject an applicant based on existing medical conditions that were not the choice of the applicant, then I see no reason why they shouldn’t be allowed to reject people who engage in relatively risky activities by choice. And as Hobbes has pointed out, if at the end of the day an employer just doesn’t want to hire smokers or people who take their coffee with cream but no sugar, then that is the employer’s right. Smokers and sugarless coffee drinkers are not protected from discrimination, regardless of how logical or silly that discrimination may seem.
[quote=“jdsmith”]Also, I think it is danergous to generalize about individual persons’ health, or sick days related to their smoking. If 75 out 100 smokers’ sick days are smoking related, than it stands that 25 are not.
So, if I smoke then every sick day I take may not be caused by or related to smoking, right? [/quote]
It doesn’t matter if only some of your sick days are the result of smoking. That a smoker on average will take more sick days than the non-smoker is what the employer is concerned with. Smokers supposedly cost the company more because of these extra sick days. Sure, plenty of individual smokers may take very few sick days, but as I mentioned above, why would an employer take the risk of hiring such people if it is difficult to dismiss them later when they turn out to be less productive? From the employer’s perspective, it would be better to avoid the problem altogether if possible.
Let me make sure I understand your point clearly before responding to it. Are you saying that a company should hire people who are smokers or are obese and then only fire them if they take an extraordinarily large number of sick days?
[/quote]
my point was that if the purpose of firing smokers was to rid the firm of people who might be less productive or take more days off, why not just fire people who are less productive and take more time off?
how do you measure productivity? since people have been arguing that smokers are less productive and have given no clear definition of productivity, i lumped it together with “taking sick days”. in that case, a married parent with young children will take much more time off than a young single smoker. that’s not even counting the mom who has to take maternity leave to give birth.
well, let’s not use the productivity excuse to justify this policy, then.
so off we go to health care:
wait, now we’re back to productivity and taking time off? 
if that’s the case, then don’t ever hire women who might get pregnant. if you think smoke breaks are bad, wait till your worker takes a few MONTHS off. periods when the workers are “difficult to deal with”? i shouldn’t touch that one. 
so do we also weed out ex-smokers and ex-drinkers who, in their youth, indulged in these activities and so are at a MUCH higher risk for disease than current young smokers? heart disease doesn’t just pop up one day, it results from years of eating poorly. older people are at much higher risk of heart disease than younger smokers.
we voluntarily engage in risky activities EVERY day. eating fast food is a risky activity and, as stated in the article, is the next group being targeted by the boss.
as has been pointed out earlier, many states have laws which state otherwise and if more companies adopt these standards(especially the “no fat people” rule), then i would expect this area to be even more heavily regulated.
So, if living in Taiwan for X years is the equivalent of smoking Y packs of cigarettes per day (due to air pollution)…should all workers in Taiwan be fired?? 
Should the workers be fired? No.
But should the health insurance premiums be the same for them? Again–no. A worker who maintains their health shouldn’t have to pay the same share as a worker who really doens’t give a damn.
I would hire a smoker. But I’d make sure he paid the higher insurance premium out of his own pocket.
One of the underlying assumptions some of the posters defending this company’s actions is that businesses can do whatever they want. “It’s their choice.” Well, no. Just as individuals do not have the freedom to choose to do whatever they want, neither do businesses. Businesses are highly regulated in most civilized societies. We all have to obey the law. Businesses have to follow all sorts of rules and fill out all kinds of red tape. Maybe some of the extremist libertarians here could argue that child labor and minimum wage laws and environmental regulations and anti-trust/monopoly/collusion laws and insider trading and undercutting competitors with illegal price-cutting and zoning regulations, should be thrown out, too?
a) Discrimination is illegal, unless it can be proven to relate to job performance (i.e., it’s okay to discriminate against ugly people if the job is in the modeling industry). You can’t not hire women because women are overall less productive in the workforce (mainly due to pregnancy and childcare), and you would have a much stronger case for never hiring women than you would for not hiring smokers. And hey, pregnancy is a choice. Women can choose not to be pregnant. Why should I as a co-worker or boss have to compensate for loss of productivity because of her frivolous lifestyle choice? 
b) We have the right to privacy. Read that sentence again. We have the right to privacy. Some of you here just do not get it. Do you want to live in a world where you need to spill intimate details of your personal life whenever you apply for a job? Step back a minute and think about how it might affect you. Maybe you’re sexually promiscuous and are therefore at a higher risk for STDs and so your insurance premiums should shoot up. Do you really want your boss prying into your sex life?
What’s next, blood samples? You know some people with certain blood types are more likely to fall prey to certain diseases. Can’t hire them. Alcoholism is a genetic disease, you know. So let’s look up your family history and see if there a lot of drunks. And - genius! - that’s a great way to get around those pesky regulations about not discriminating by race. I’m not going to hire any Native Americans because most of them lack the enzyme to break down alcohol, which leads to high alcoholism rates in that group. And hey, it’s not racism because it’s based on genetic data. You wouldn’t want to hire a hemophiliac, would you? God, think about all the sick days a hemophiliac would take. Or someone with a history of diabetes in their family. Or someone living the homosexual lifestyle (unless she’s a lesbian, in which case she’s at a much lower risk for AIDS than people in other groups). Maybe we should check out your music collection before you apply, because people who listen to classical and soft pop are more likely to live a healthy lifestyle than people who listen to death metal and gangsta rap.
Great post Rubicon.
You raise some great points, and I’m going to have to think a little more about a couple of the things you said. Here are a couple quick thoughts though:
On the issue of discrimination “Discrimination is illegal, unless it can be proven to relate to job performance” – are you sure about that? It’s been a while since I read much on this subject, so I’m not saying that you are necessarily wrong – but the way you describe the restriction sounds a little broad.
You and I are in complete agreement when it comes to discrimination that is due to membership class that has been given special protection under the law (i.e. discrimination due to factors like race, sex, religion, age, physical disability). So leave those aside. Are you certain that you can’t discriminate against “non-protected” classes?
One group that I know it is legal to discriminate against is Asian Americans, and indeed many of the nation’s most prestigious universities have explicit policies that due exactly this when admitting students. But this kind of discrimination is it’s own subject, and I realize that’s not what we are really talking about on this thread.
So what about other categories, that are not protected and also not specifically singled out as being acceptable to discriminate against?
[color=blue]Example: Names okay
Could I, for example, decide that my little coffee shop is not going to hire anyone with the name Michael, John, Janet, or Jessica? No reason. Just because I don’t like those names. I submit that this would be okay, because people with those names are not a protected class.
Example: Using proxy for a protected class, NOT okay
The only place where one needs to be careful in discriminating on a “non-protected-class” basis, if when the criteria you choose are not in fact as harmless as you claim, but are actually a disguised form of discrimination against a protected class. Thus, if my coffee shop decided that it would refuse to hire anyone with the names Wang, Chang, Chen, or Lin, a court would likely find that this was actually racial discrimination (illegal) that was simply being disguised as name discrimination (legal). (Assume, of course, that coffee shops are a realm where the government has told us that a person’s skin color is not relevant to their qualifications – unlike, say, admission to MIT, or a a job at a medical lab at Johns Hopkins.) [/color]
So it is not that I disagree with your basic point (i.e. “Companies do face restrictions on who they can hire/fire”) it’s just that the protections offered by these laws are also restricted. They are restricted to the prevention of certain social harms such as racism or sexism (great example -btw- bringing up women having kids – that’s one I’m still thinking about) and in the absence of these type of social harms the law should not get involved. This is why I do not think smokers are a protected class that would benefit from these types of laws.
Your privacy arguments are very interesting – and maybe this is the social harm that might justify legal intervention here. Not sure how I feel about that argument yet. But in any event it still would not mean that disrimination is illegal in the absence of a recognized social harm – it would be more like “Okay Hobbes, here’s your social harm: erosion of personal privacy.” Hmm…
On your “Maybe regulations regarding 1, 2, 3, 4 should be thrown out too?” question – here are very quick responses (although each could certainly be a thread in itself)
child labor laws: no, I’d generally support these
minimum wage: poor immigrants not being hired so that my friend JJ can get a higher wage at his after school job to buy pot? yes, I have a lot of sympathy for elimination of this to help the poor (as opposed to the middle-class kids with uncles to hire them who benefit from it)
trust/monopoly/collusion laws: yes, many of these serve to protect politically well-connected industries who are having their lunch handed to them by harder-working, more efficient competitors. I’d scap a lot of them, but not all.
insider trading: ambivilent, – but probably yes, get rid of the current law. i understand the “fraud on the market” rationalization – but question whether the harms outweigh the enforcement costs
undercutting competitors with illegal price-cutting: sometimes a legitimate complaint. very often another way for corporations with political juice to keep themselves rich at the expense of consumers and harder working competitor companies. many of these law should go.
zoning regulations: yes, we should have zoning regulations. do many of the current zoning regulations serve to keep lawyers fat, and make money for politicians and their real-estate developer campaign doners? yes. many of these should be thrown out. the poor real-estate mogul and his corrupt politician friend on the city-planning board can just buy smaller BMWs next year. :boo-hoo:
An amazing attitude from a socialist such as yourself. I am beggining to think all that talk about the “Workers’ Paradise” and reverting the ownership of the means of production to the proletariat was just a load of hot air!
Er, seriously, though, I don’t see how the company can vary the terms of an employment contract like this. If these people are dismissed then it’s a simple breach of contract, and as they will have suffered a loss they will be entitled to compo.
Pretty likely these workers were on shitty terms anyway. Most companies force prospective employees to sign contracts saying “I promise to do anything whatsoever the company wants, including sacrificing my first-born son and providing my wife and daughters to the management of the company for their sexual amusement from time to time as required.”
This is why of course nowadays employment contracts are worthless, and most litigation involves a statutory right having been violated.
This whole thing is a load of bollocks. So your employer has the right to dictate how you spend your time outside the office too? So in reality, in the USA, it is not the individual which is the most important unit of society, but the corporation. Individual’s lives must be shaped and organised in such a way as to provide maximum utility to the organisation (or “unit”) they work for. Only in this way can the country unify behind the Party, extolling the virtues of Socialism, and move forward together into a bright new…
Oh. Sorry. Got carried away. Social engineering. Good stuff. And these fucking disabled people - let’s shoot them all. That’ll save us the cost of all those stupid ramps. Smokers? Who needs them? People who drive too fast? Fuckem. Out on their arses. They’re costing the company money. If we can’t kill them, we should force them to have speed monitors installed in their cars. And Carruthers’ wife’s not getting pregnant. Studies show married me with children are better workers. Tell Carruthers if she’s not preganant by April, he’s fired.
And when obesity becomes the number one killer in the USA, we’ll make the stupid fuckers sign a bit of paper saying that we can fire them if their body mass index is over 25%. Except senior management of course! And I fucking hate red cars. Can we make them all drive blue cars? Ring the lawyer. I’m serious.
:loco: