Question to the mods here. Isn’t this thread in the wrong forum? This is Great Debates. Yet the OP asks “Michigan firm won’t allow smoking, even on employee’s own time - Is this legal?” Is this not a question with a factual answer? May I respond with an opinion about the laws?
[Disclaimer: I happen to work and live in Meridian Township, Michigan. And work in “Okemos”, which is just a postal fiction which includes a part of Meridian Township. (Postally, I live in a part of “East Lansing”, which include the part of Meridian Township where I live.) I am also a smoker. As I have a personal, direct interest in this matter, I need a mod to clarify the extent I am allowed to post in this thread.]
I’ve seen a study that purports to show that cigarette smoking actually lowers health care and pension costs because smokers will die younger. A large percentage of health care costs are incurred during the last few years of life. Many smokers die of a heart attack in which the first symptom is death. The costs involved in this are minimal.
If this were true, and I’m not guaranteeing it is, would it be justifiable for a company to insist on employees who smoke? After all, people are arguing that it’s all right for a company to exert control in your private life because they can save money by doing so. What if you only smoked in the office and stopped as soon as you got home? Would that be all right?
Seems like an insignificant difference to me. Whether or not an employee smokes pot or crack on his own time is none of the employer’s business, and neither is whether the employee exceeds the speed limit on his commute home, shares copyrighted music on his home PC, or practices oral sex in a state where it’s illegal. The law is to be enforced by police officers, not employers.
I’m not a mod, but I am the OP. I put the question here because while it might have a factual answer(s) (which have been posted) , the lifestyle control issue was (IMO) so over the top it might be more appropriately discussed in GD than GQ. As long a libel or slander is not involved why would having “personal interest” in the issue prevent you from posting in this thread in any way, shape, or form?
Harumph. “Right to work”. Yeah right. Does anyone else snicker when they hear that phrase? It really means the right to work hard for years, for maybe your entire career, and then get fired for no reason at all, with no recourse and lose your pension. It means busting your tail, and getting fired because the boss’s retarded son is getting your job. It means getting fired for doing something perfectly legal, after hours and off company property. It’s a pretty strange phrase.
It’s a sort of bait and switch. Health plans were used as bait to attract employees. Now, the rules are changed (the switch) so the boss won’t have to spend any of the health plan money. He also gets to fire people rather than pay pensions and can hire younger cheaper emloyees to replace them.
This Howard Weyers is a real pile of shit. While we’re at it, does he slug down 3/4/5/6/7 martini lunches with other high ranking cronies? May be a health risk. Has he ever had a speeding ticket? He might get hurt. Has he ever pulled the “sorry honey gotta work late” while banging the secretary? I suspect he is probably a santimonious hypocritical dictatorial lying pile of shit as opposed to just any old pile of shit. Why doesn’t he just fire all the old people. You know those damn old people get sick. Even worse, some retire and get a pension despite our best efforts. Very inconvenient.
And then people get scared when other people start talking Union. I hope some smart lawyer grabs this smoking policy and kicks his ass with it.
checking for breakdown products of nicotine in your system, by measuring the amount of cotinine (but, as you said, this would pick up users of “the patch”)
measuring blood levels of carbon monoxide. By and large, the levels of carbon monoxide in the blood of smokers are much higher than in the blood of non-smokers. To a very large extent, there is no overlap in the levels between the two groups.
Thanks! I also was wondering for health insurance reasons. I’m listed as a non-smoker, but I do occassionally take tobacco orally, and I was wondering whether that would set off whatever test they use.
I would like to know if it’s legal to ask an employee about their personal habits when not at work - in as much as it does not affect their job.
I mean, an employer can ask you if you smoke? Can they ask you “did you bang the old lady last night?”? Where is the distinction drawn? Why can they ask you about smoking, and not your sex life? Or can they? Are there any Canadian Dopers reading this? How would a situation like this play in Canada?
Now this is an excellent question. In fact it raises another point: how much evidence do they need that their rules are actually contributing to lower healthcare costs? If the CEO got the crazy idea that eating blue food caused health problems, could they institute a “no blue food, even on your own time” rule on the grounds that it decreases healthcare costs?
And in less extreme examples, how about having babies? That costs a lot in healthcare. Now, there are laws about maternity leave, so you can’t simply fire someone because they need to take time off to have a baby, but maybe when they get back from leave, you can fire them because people who have kids cost more?
I dont see your point. Legality is defined by the state. If the state says it is not legal to fire someone for outside activities then it is not legal.
I would also like to know how much this testing of employees costs. My understanding is that drug tests, of any kind, are not cheap. If you have to test 200 employees, could that wipe out the savings on healthcare costs? Same as in schools. Taxpayers are paying for these kids to be tested, some without any indication that the child is doing drugs in the first place.
In a related note, I read/heard the other day about a proposal to randomly drug test elected officials, judges, etc. Wonder how quickly the tests would be ruled unconsitutional after that gets passed! Forgive me for not providing the link. I’ll look for it.
Leaving aside pensions, doesn’t this only “work” when the employees are with a company for a long time, like into their 60s & 70s? How many businesses employ the same people for a long enough time for this benefit to be seen? Given the mobility of the workforce and the fact that seniority at a company doesn’t seem to mean much given downsizing, layoffs, mergers, etc, I doubt any executive would buy into this.
To be fair, the studies that claim this are looking at the cost to government, not to a private business.
Basically, the argument goes that smokers die earlier, which saves Social Security and the like more money than the public treasury expends on smoking-related health care.
That comparison really can’t be made to a private company. Virtually no companies these days offer a fixed pension plan – its all self-managed 401(k)s nowadays – so the company doesn’t incur additional costs when retired employees live a long time. And having smokers on your health care coverage does increase those costs. A private company doesn’t have the same offset that the government does.
That doesn’t mean this is a good policy (although it is perfectly legal, and I think it should remain so – let the market for labor sort out the good policies from the bad). I’m just pointing out that the “smokers save companies money” argument is fallacious.
Well, yeah. I’d rather have the state prevent the company from doing something “legal”, when that “legal” act is restricting off hours behavior. For such a policy to be legal, I think the employer should have to [ul][li]demonstrate that there are costs that it must bear as a result of employee smoking, and demonstrate that the ONLY way of addressing the problem is the off hours prohibition against smoking.[/ul] I accept that the company can fulfill the first requirement, but I don’t think it can prove the second. At least not to my satisfaction.[/li]
Of course, this is just the way I think things ought to be, though I realize they are not.
Companies pay for group insurance at a rate determined by the number of people in the plan. I don’t think that these are the health care costs that they mean. It’s a fact the smokers, on average, take significantly more sick days than non-smokers. They get sick more often and stay sick longer. This has a cost.
That said, if I ever have employees, I would never institute such a policy.
Some of you people worry me. Seriously. In the name of terror and goodgodthinkofthechildren and whatever other bogey man is out there, you are eager and happy to accept increasing amounts of government interference in daily life. In the name of “economics” and the “right to work” (yeah right) you are content to let some business suit stick his nose in your private life and your home. The underlying retort always seems to be “love it or leave it” when it involves government interference, and “go work somewhere else” if it is corporate interference. Don’t any of you have any concept of freedom at its most basic level? I mean the “leave me the hell alone it’s my life” level? Are you all really that weak, that passive, that eager to become someone else’s serfs? Is the stock answer always going to be some sad version of “knuckle under or run away”?
Think about it. You are slowly and happily giving away the most basic thing -control of your own life. The sad part is, you are getting nothing in return. Obey every rule the boss makes. Accept his complete takeover of your life, which could conceivably include inspections of your home. Let the suits tell you where to live, what car to drive, what to wear, what sort of person to marry, what church to attend and who to socialize with. It makes no difference. The next rule may be the one that he uses to fire you anyway. When you are on the streets and hungry, I will echo back to you “just find another job”.
I think I see the beginnings of a Pit thread about people who are so willing to be controlled and so weak.
“An honest wage for an honest day’s work” didn’t used to mean total servitude.