Glad you live in a black and white world. If the Cancer society says that a joint is a carcinogen, will people stop smoking them? I don’t think so, since the law hasn’t been able to deter them.
so it’s okay to limit freedonm based on conjecture? next.
Smell the flowers. Happens every day. What do you say to the guy in the blood pit at a slaughterhouse, standing in slippery ankle-deep blood all day, waving around a razor sharp knife? the only thing the employer must do is try to provide reasonable protection from a hazard. Smoke hoods are considered reasonable protection from the hazards of lethal chemicals in industry, they are more than adequate protection against secondhand smoke. And their compliance can be monitored easily.
see #2
so your freedom to not smell smoke is more important than someone’s freedom to smoke, even when you cannot in any way be affected by the smoke because an efficient filtration system is removing it entirely? explain how that is. At least for now, your freedom is worth as much as mine, as you said, as long as our freedoms don’t infringe on one another. Tell me why it’s better to put a government restriction on one person’s freedoms than to allow both to enjoy their freedoms simultaneously?
And no I don’t want to hear 'that’s the way it is" I want your reasoning why it is better to remove freedom from one person than to find a solution that allows them both their freedoms.
Bob cos, of course you are right, but I’m just trying to get across the point to Iwire that there are other actions that are acceptable to all that do not restrict anyones freedoms.
It has not been the responsibility of the worker to find a safe place to work for a long time. It is the reasonability of the employer to provide a safe work place.
I have a hard hat and safety glass that are bought and paid for by my employer. If I must go into a man hole I must test the atmosphere with an expensive tool that the company provides and if the atmosphere is poisonous I vent it with fans provided by my employer. I have a responsibility to follow the safety procedures and to act in a way that is safe to coworkers but at no time can my employer say go into that hole unprotected or work someplace else, sure it happens to some people but they should say no and assert there rights for a safe work place
Nonsense, not in the sense you’re suggesting. It is not the employer’s responsibility–nor is it possible–to provide an environment absolutely free of any possible hazard.
The fact that there are safety regulations does not lead us to conclude that any risk must be eliminated.
Correct all work places are going to have some danger, but when the law has identified something as a danger it IS the employer who has to take action to lesson the risk.
And to add to that by not taking action the employer exposes them self to litigation that’s going to be tuff to say that they where unaware of the danger when that’s what the health establishment is pushing
Even if I do not think it is as dangerous as they say.
In my trade OSHA would call this a “Willful Violation”
Well, it did in the bowling alley I was at, because the only employees who needed to be in there were those who were smoking themselves. It wasn’t a separate room with lanes and waitress service and such. It was a room with a few chairs, a table, ashtrays and separate ventilation, just for smoking. No reason a restaurant or other business couldn’t have such a room if the owner chose to except that the new laws often don’t allow that. I can’t claim to speak for all smokers, but in general, most smokers I know don’t have a problem and won’t refuse to go to a restaurant or bar because they have to smoke in a separate room. They might, however spend less time and money at bowling alleys,pool halls and bars if they have to go outside to smoke. Which also tends to just move the problem to right outside the door, causing all those employees to be exposed to huge clouds of second hand smoke as they enter or leave the building.
Let’s try this again. First of all, talk to a lawyer and tell me if the lawyer tells you that law is black and white. Once you have thus been educated come back and debate more. The law is far from black and white.
Next, Regardless of what is law anywhere at any time: Is it better to attempt to solve the problem with means other than restricting personal freedom? You say you can punch at me as long as I don’t get hit; why can’t someone smoke as long as you can’t be affected by it? or does that only apply to your freedom to punch in midair, and not my theoretical ability to enjoy a smoke? The point i’m trying to get across is that knee-jerk banning of smoking benefits some but injures some as well. Get the other issue out of your mind for a second or two, and tell me what is right, really morally and ethically right (Not legally!!!) that two people in a room, one smoking, one not, each feels they have a right. One to enjoy a smoke free room, the other to smoke. Is it better to settle that difference by a reasonable compromise, (for example, an efficient smoke collection system) than to involve external forces that supress one person’s ability to enjoy life so that the other may do so?Whatever the point is, changing the classification of secondhand smoke does nothing to reduce the irritation it causes; what is needed is a way to remove the smoke. Is that not clear?
BTW OSHA defines a willful violation as one committed with an intentional disregard of, or plain indifference to, the requirements of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. I’d be surprised to find that OSHA (who has no problem with people working in factories with known airborne carcinogens) has a problem with secondhand smoke, and if it does have a problem with it, it’s more than likely at the urging of the secondhand smoke nutbags.
In don’t smoke. Secondhand smoke annoys the shit out of me, whether it’s a carcinogen or not. I want it to go away. Because I understand that people like to smoke, I don’t want to take away their ability to do so. A simple solution? get the smoke out of the air. A complex, solution which removes personal freedom from individuals? Ban smoking.
So just because the law thinks something, that means it’s right, right? like the laws that allowed slavery. the laws that allowed opression of minorities. the laws that say it’s illegal to run over a manhole in Chicago.(IIRC, only recently removed from the books) Those laws(and many like them) made life a living and utter hell for hundreds of thousands of people, and the backlash of them is still being felt today. We now know those laws were wrong, don’t we? Are we supposed to simply shrug our shoulders and say “Oh, well, that’s what the law says so it MUST be OK? " No. The POINT is to try to prevent wrongheaded laws from being passed because they have long term effects(not all good) on people’s lives. the POINT is to call lawmakers to task when a wrongheaded law is passed. Blithely following the law because 'it’s the law” without examining it’s practicality and the veracity of the tenets on which it is based gets you into trouble everytime. Like the Harrison Narcotics act. Prohibition. A lot of things have been wrongheaded, we daily pay the price for a lot of wrongheaded laws. You think it’s ok to add more? When the cops break down your door and confiscate your property because of the joint in the ashtray in the garage, will that be OK for you because “it’s the law”? An obvious exaggeration, but the more freedoms you lose the fewer you can afford to lose.
Restaurant owners know that they are in one of the single most competitive customer service oriented businesses in existence. Repeat business is the backbone of the industry. Changes cause repeat business to falter – radical revamps of the mode of service, menu overhauls, changes in liquor policy, protracted renovations of the dining area, no longer accepting (certain) credit cards, all of these things will drive patrons away.
The decision to change a restaurant into a non-smoking establishment is a big, frightening thing. It is a massive change and it absolutely positively will result in the loss of certain business: die-hard smokers who cannot get through a meal without their precious nicotine will take the change as yet another personal attack on their freedoms and refuse to return. Even when statistics say that restaurants which are forced to go non-smoking do not suffer financially, not many restauranteurs are willing to take that chance so long as they aren’t getting public complaints about the inclusion of a smoking section (and why would they?) and can find waitstaff willing to work in them.
There is limited proof of second-hand smoke’s role as a carcinogen. There is plenty of evidence that it is a significant irritant that exacerbates a number of respiratory ailments. Talk to an asthmatic, emphysema patient or anyone else with breathing issues about what cigarette smoke can do to them and you’ll choke back the suggestion that it isn’t “dangerous” pretty quickly. Or you ought to, at least.
But this keeps coming back to the “slippery slope” protestations with the suggestion that public smoking bans are “infringing on rights” somehow. That argument falls down because there is no specific right to smoke in public nor a right to smoke on private property which is open to the public for a prescribed limited function, such as a restaurant.
Given the fact that there is a side-effect of smoking which cannot be easily contained and which has a deleterious effect on non-smoking bystanders, and the fact that it is a recreation enjoyed by a distinct and shrinking minority, I’m continually amazed at the vehemence with which people argue that they should have some right to do it in public places. There are a lot of things that people like to do (during meals and otherwise), things which absolutely do not have any impact whatsoever on those around them which they still refrain from doing in atmospheres where they may be anyone in the vicinity who may have an objection. Why can’t smokers show the same consideration? And why shouldn’t society have the right to force them to do by whatever means available when they are doing harm to others with their choice of amusing themselves?
I haven’t actually seen anyone argue that in this thread. The closest I’ve seen is the argument that the business owner should have the right to allow smoking. A different issue.
But who is arguing that? I don’t have an absolute right to smoke. If someone wants to prohibit smoking in his establishment, I don’t have the right to ignore that.
Let’s say I want to open a bar/restaurant that will specifically cater to the smoker. I’ve decided that’s my target clientele, and I will provide them a place to have a Bud, a Marlboro and a cheeseburger (all of them legal things to imbibe). I will advertise as such, I’ll put a big sign out front, I’ll offer cigars, I’ll have this policy announced to everyone who comes in the door–the whole nine yards. I will also only hire waitstaff willing to accept, in writing, this working condition. Just for giggles, let’s say I’ll even pay them a premium. And this is the only type of establishment I’m interested in opening.
Why do you, or anyone else, get to say I can’t do this? If you don’t like this type of environment, why isn’t the solution that you eat somewhere else? Do you have a specific right to be smoke-free in my place? Why? If you support your contention with the fact that it is a public establishment, please provide your logical rationale as to why this should be so.
Now, try the same hypothetical, but I’m opening a cigar bar–i.e., the primary service we provide is the sale of cigars and a place to light 'em up. Leather chairs, brass table lamps, ferns (reeking of tobacco) everywhere. Waitstaff bringing you brandy if you’d like, but many of the customers don’t drink. They’re there for the stogies. Is it reasonable to force my cigar place to be smoke free? Why or why not?
I would say that you would be the only employer (other then Govt. or Mil.) in the US that could ask this of there employees.
If I am building a high-rise building it would certainly be attractive to get the employees to sign away their rights offer them money to do this and save money by not installing any safety measures.
I think that would be a step backwards for workers rights.
What exactly are employers asking of employees? That is pretty broad.
I am a simple guy, so what you propose sounds to me like:
I the employer will offer you the worker “premium money” (bribe)
So you will sign this paper that says this place may have a hazard that I do not wish to correct, (to costly, lost business, takes to long, or I just do not want to) by doing so, if you get hurt you are on your own, because I told you so.
This is what many businesses would do, if allowed to.
