Michigan firm won't allow smoking, even on employee's own time - Is this legal?

[D_Odds]

Spectre, the ability to pick up stakes and find a new corporate lord is a huge step in feudalism, as is the ability to pick up stakes and create your own domain.

Employees need jobs.
Employers need workers.

If the employer makes onerous rules that drive away the best workers, he’s doing himself and his stockholders a disservice, and giving his competitors an advantage.

I know there are cities and towns built around a single employer, where the employer can get away with this. They know it is hard for many to uproot themselves, and there usually isn’t much alternative employment. It makes the decision to leave harder.

I work in the financial industry. It is simply accepted in this industry that your security trades must be, at the very least, pre-cleared. My current employer has even more onerous trading guidelines. We have a huge list of companies in which we cannot invest, as it might affect our independence. This includes immediate family (although from what I can tell, most people don’t delve into the investing of siblings, parents or children). Yet Jack Cafferty (CNN) doesn’t make pre-clearance or independence rules his question of the day. I have an option. I can abide the rules, or I can actually talk to one of the many headhunters calling me and search for a new job. And if I choose to look for a new job, you can bet your last dollar I’m not leaving voluntarily without a clear plan and a backup.

Boggette, Duke pointed out that it might not lead to a decline in healthcare costs - at least in the form of lowered insurance. However, healthier people take fewer sick days, and fewer sick days can save tons of money. Enough to offset testing, I don’t know.

[SteveG1]

I clicked the link to that long report on Henry Ford and his goons. That was a bunch of twisted people. But, I suppose, to make them stop using all those gangster tactics would have been “anti-freedom” and anti-business.

Now we are also including general health - weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, etc. A lot of these traits and tendencies are inherited. You can do everything right and still be struggling to just fail. Who sets the goal? Who fires the people who don’t make the grade? What about the people whose “numbers” go kablooey due to work related stress and aggravation? The sort of company that most likely demands total loyalty , working beyond the normal workday for every little brushfire (negating the ability to work out on a regular schedule), and in the case of where I work, used to extort their people into “donating” many hours of free work. They called it “green time”. At the end, many of these same workers got a “We love you, we owe it all to you, you’re laid off” speech. Right before Christmas. Then the suits gave themselves big ass bonuses.

Here’s a really rich part. A little while later, the suits came to us gubmint guys and said “We need more money to stay on schedule, and need relief on the requirements we contractually agreed to because we don’t have the money or people to do what we promised.” We howled about that and started making calls and having meetings. Their final customer (NASA) caved in once again, making it a done deal (rewarding them).

Unless you have laws to back you up, or a good honest union, it looks like companies really want to go back to the Ford Method of Management. They’ll just do it in small increments so it looks “reasonable”.

[jayjay]

@SteveG1

Unless you have laws to back you up, or a good honest union, it looks like companies really want to go back to the Ford Method of Management. They’ll just do it in small increments so it looks “reasonable”.

See, this is my default assumption about ANY business that employs people outside the owner’s extended family. It’s the state of affairs that prevailed at the end of the 19th Century, the era of the robber barons. And we see how well it worked then.

What constantly amazes me is that there are people who want to try it out all over again.

[1010011010]

@Kel Varnsen - Latex Division

So what is your solution? To have the state prevent this company from doing something legal?

Sure. In the US, that actually is a power the State has, since corporations have no rights besides those created for them by the State and granted through legal fiction. Redefine the rights of a corporation and the company is doing something illegal.

Incidentally, since the US government technically lacks the authority to act in such a way that undermines the recognized rights of US citizens, could it follow that the State granted charter of a corporation becomes void if a corp begins to infringe the Rights of the People? By granting the charter, the government is failing to protect the recognized rights of the citizens --> it lacks the authority to grant the charter --> the charter is void --> the corporation does not exist.

[astro]

Related LA Times article

Costs Make Employers See Smokers as a Drag

Employers have recently tried every carrot they can think of — including cash incentives and iPods — to persuade employees to quit smoking. Now some are trying the stick.

Pointing to rising health costs and the oversized proportion of insurance claims attributed to smokers, some employers in California and around the country are refusing to hire applicants who smoke and, sometimes, firing employees who refuse to quit.

“Employers are realizing the majority of health costs are spent on a small minority of workers,” says Bill Whitmer, chief executive of the Health Enhancement Research Organization, an employer and healthcare coalition in Birmingham, Ala.

Federal and state laws bar employers from turning down applicants or firing workers based on race, religion or gender. Some states have enacted laws offering similar protections for smokers. But experts say workers in nearly half the states, including California, have few legal options if employers decide to prohibit them from smoking outside the workplace.

Employees in many states “work at the discretion of their employers and can be terminated for almost any reason as long as it’s not illegal,” says Stephen Sugarman, a law professor at UC Berkeley.

Last fall, Union Pacific Corp., an Omaha-based transportation company, stopped hiring smokers in seven states. Company executives said the move was made to help quell employee health costs, which have jumped more than 10% each of the last three years. Weyco Inc., an employee benefits firm with 200 employees in Okemos, Mich., began random drug tests for nicotine on Jan. 1, saying it would fire workers who failed the test or refused to quit smoking. (Four Weyco employees resigned rather than take the test, says the company’s president, Howard Weyers.) The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department plans soon to require applicants for deputy sheriff positions to sign a no-smoking agreement.

In most cases, employers are asking workers to report their smoking habits voluntarily or adding disclaimers such as “nonsmokers only” to job postings. Others are requiring workers to take breathalyzer tests that can catch traces of carbon monoxide in their lungs or submit to urine tests to detect nicotine.

A sheriff’s office in Florida is asking job applicants who have a recent history of smoking to pass a polygraph test proving they no longer smoke outside of work.

[SteveG1]

@1010011010

Redefine the rights of a corporation and the company is doing something illegal.

Gee.

Food for thought. Re-examine the posts along these lines, as posed on both sides of the argument.

Redefine the rights of an employee and the employee is doing something that is grounds for dismissal = good.
Redefine the rights of a corporation and the company is doing something illegal. = bad.

Does anyone else see the double standard here?

[jayjay]

@SteveG1

Redefine the rights of an employee and the employee is doing something that is grounds for dismissal = good.
Redefine the rights of a corporation and the company is doing something illegal. = bad.

Does anyone else see the double standard here?

It’s not a double standard. People (i.e., employees) have full rights of citizenship (if they’re citizens). Corporations do not. They are legal “persons” for the purposes of responsibility and liability, not for the purposes of rights.

[SteveG1]

I still have to maintain that it is a double standard. On the one hand a person or company is saying “I can arbitrarily and unilaterally change the rules whenever I damn well please” when it suits their purpose, no matter that it can ruin people. On the other hand if it is levied on them and does not suit their purpose they cry foul. It is hypocrisy, at its finest. It is worthy of the deepest contempt. It is not about firing someone because they are useless, or firing them because the company can’t affort to keep them. It is about “engineering” the rules to fuck people over.

“Break a deal, face the wheel”. You changed the rules, you broke the deal.

There are reasons why we have labor laws, antitrust laws and unions. It is to protect people from the Robber Baron mentality. They were a result of widespread situations, in which the companies and robber barons had proved that they were NOT to be trusted. Henry Ford was only one example.

[jayjay]

@SteveG1

I still have to maintain that it is a double standard. On the one hand a person or company is saying “I can arbitrarily and unilaterally change the rules whenever I damn well please” when it suits their purpose, no matter that it can ruin people. On the other hand if it is levied on them and does not suit their purpose they cry foul. It is hypocrisy, at its finest. It is worthy of the deepest contempt. It is not about firing someone because they are useless, or firing them because the company can’t affort to keep them. It is about “engineering” the rules to fuck people over.

“Break a deal, face the wheel”. You changed the rules, you broke the deal.

There are reasons why we have labor laws, antitrust laws and unions. It is to protect people from the Robber Baron mentality. They were a result of widespread situations, in which the companies and robber barons had proved that they were NOT to be trusted. Henry Ford was only one example.

Whoops! I think we’re talking at cross purposes. I’m pretty sure I’m on your side, judging from your last paragraph. I must have misunderstood the post I responded to.

[1010011010]

I’m with jayjay on not quite following where SteveG1 is coming from. I don’t know why he quoted me, since it seemed pretty clear I was saying exactly the opposite of what he seems to be ascribing to me.

I’d like to see a process put in place for non-stockholders to disincorporate a bad actor against its will. Became interested in it because of the actions of the RIAA, but I think it would be very useful if corporations could be executed by public opinion.

[SteveG1]

I was trying (not too well) to imagine what the response would be from those who are “pro business no matter what” and to point out the double standard they like to fall back on.

Government “interference” is bad if it runs counter to what the corporation wants, when it tells them they can’t do something. Restraint of trade. they call it On the other hand, who is it that often lobbies for government “interference” if it suits their purposes (tariffs, protectionism etc)?

Example: Companies always run up the flag for free trade to excuse their actions. But, re the U.S. drugs vs. Canadian drugs, guess who lobbied strongly to “protect” us from those “evil Canadian” drugs? American drug companies. And it was to restrict free trade and was mostly bullshit.

[Balthisar]

@Reeder

In a right to work state they can fire you because your breath stinks if they so desire.

As long as they don’t violate the federal laws.

Age, race, sex et al.

Keep in mind that those workers covered by a collective bargaining agreement aren’t susceptible.

I’ll just point out that Michigan is not (regretably) a “right to work” states. It’s an “at-will” state. Even in a right-to-work state, non-members are still covered by collective bargaining agreements – they merely don’t provide funds to an organization that may or may not be corrupt.

[2nd_Law]

If this company was in Illinois, they wouldn’t be able to do this because Illinois has a Right to Privacy in the Workplace Act

I don’t know if other states have similar acts: apparently Michigan doesn’t.

[Kozmik]

Here is a previous thread on the subject. I hope that this fuels the debate!

[malkavia]

Can you imagine what a drag this company’s Christmas parties must be?

Good grief.
I’m still trying to get my head around

Anyone concerned about limiting employers’ rights to specify terms of employment should know that federal law protects people with conditions like obesity, alcoholism and AIDS.

Why, exactly is alcoholism and obesity protected? What makes an alcoholic or obese individual so different from a smoker?

As someone who has spent a majority of my life overweight and a good 6+ years as a smoker, I can tell you that I’ve found lowering my caloric intake about a thousand times easier than trying to quit smoking.

What if we found a less attractive name for smoking? Morbid Nicotinism? Can we call it a disease too?

I should also mention that as an overweight smoker, I tend to almost NEVER go to the doctor if I can avoid it. The last thing I need to hear when I’m sick is “Lose weight, quit smoking”. My frickin arm could be broken and I would wager my doctor would just tell me to lose weight and exercise more.

My thinner, healthier coworkers visit their doctors likely 5 times more often than I do (judging from the amount of time they take off to go to the doctor, anyhow).

Wouldn’t it make more sense to throw everyone in at a standard rate and once they’ve been with the healthcare plan for a year, evaluate the amount of money that insurance company spent on that individual and their family alone, then increase or decrease their rate accordingly?

I don’t see why a single man who never visit the doctor should need to pay as much for health insurance as a woman who goes in for well woman visits, birth control, and possibly prenatal care (She will, of course, pay more than he will once Jr. is born, but my point still stands for the duration of her pregnancy.)

I sincerely doubt this is about the bottom line.