Smoke and be fired
Believe it or not the smoking I'm referring to is of the legal kind - cigarettes. Not only is the government taxing the shit out of smokers and sponsoring an all-out campaign to stop smoking, now an employer in Michigan is using healthcare costs as an excuse to fire people who smoke on their own time. Check this - they are doing random nicotine testing!!!
Ridiculous!? You bet your fanny it is!
Ridiculous!? You bet your fanny it is!
posted by z @ 3:40 AM
4 Comments:
At 8:33 AM,
Rama said…
Right now I'm working on a case for Philip Morris. There is no law preventing employers from not hiring (or firing in this case) a smoker. Equal opportunity doesn't apply to the choices people make in their life (only the things they cannot change, like their skin color). Therefore, smokers get majorly discriminated against.
At 4:17 PM,
nell said…
This could be like one of those hypothetical slippery slopes we always heard about in ethics classes.
Smoking is bad for the health. We all know this now. So is obesity, and we all know this as well. Does an obese, or even just overweight, individual choose to become overweight? Can it be proven in any way? Are there laws protecting overweight people from being discriminated against? As a group, are they lobbying for protection from discrimination?
And choice... how do we determine if someone "chose" to start smoking? One could argue, if one wanted to be argumentative (and for some reason, I do), that someone growing up in a household of smokers would be predisposed to smoking, similar to alcoholism and domestic violence. Gotta draw the line someplace, but... where?
hehe
At 4:54 AM,
z said…
Sam - the problem gets quite complicated when stated like that - does that mean that a private employer should be able to refuse to hire a person based on their faith? Surely faith is a personal choice.
Naturally one could argue that smoking increases an employer's medical liability. An easy fix would be for companies to refuse to provide medical insurance to smokers (and perhaps slightly increase the salary) or provide medical insurance and decrease the salary.
At 5:08 AM,
z said…
nellie - excellent points.
this is going to get even trickier once reading a persons genetic code becomes affordable. if someone has a weak heart and is "likely" to die by age 35 does that mean companies should be able to refuse employment? i thought the movie "gattaca" did a fabulous exploration of this very topic.
the only sensible solution is to protect people from discrimination, period. companies could be protected by not being required to pay medical costs over a certain "median" sum.
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