If I recall, the state of NSW(?) in Australia is proposing legislation allowing employers to dock the pay of smokers who take time to go out and grab a smoke during working hours.
Apparently they must have the statistics showing smokers are not as productive as non-smokers.
I can’t help but wonder if one can be fired for whom one chooses to associate with- so what if I’m not a smoker, but a person I live with is?
I’m curious as to what your position is on music in the workplace. I can’t stand it yet I have had to put up with it where ever I’ve worked. Oh, and what is your position on Playboy in the employee lunch room?
With regards to those who claim smokers are less productive because of breaks, I would counter that my experience and observations indicate that smokers are more focused and productive while working than non smokers. A cigarette break is often an opportunity to assess and organize one’s work for the next hour or so of intense prosecution. Nicotine fits generally occur when uncertainty of direction is an issue, and the smoke break is intended to clarify the problem for a solution.
Right country, but last I heard about this, it was Tasmania, not New South Wales. They’re planning to apply it to government workers, not the private sector in general.
My reservation about either docking the pay or smokers/making them work extra time to make up for the ciggy breaks is that the ciggy break is not the only office time-waster. As I type, there are three reps gathered around the coffee station chattering about child-rearing and home renovations, which topics are certainly nothing to do with work.
They’ve been there for ten minutes, accomplishing nothing work-related. If I have a cig break, I’m back at my desk and working within five minutes. Yet, under the proposed Tas. legislation, my pay would be docked, or I’d have to work extra time, but the coffee station chat klatch is fine, apparently, no problems there. I’ll lay aside my objections to docking smokers’ pay/making them work extra when the same happens to excessive gossipers or other office timewasters.
I used to work at Blockbuster Video, and I hated working with smokers. Every couple hours, off the go to suck on their deathsticks and come back smelling like an ashtray so that I couldn’t stand to talk to them, or be near them when they breathed. And during those ten minutes, who had to deal with everything in the store, all at once, everytime? Me. Alone. Which is, of course, against company policy, but whats policy to the smokers who have to feed their addiction.
I’ll never own a business, but if I did, I would not allow any smoking anywhere in the building, for any reason. If you want to smoke, you can go hang out behind the dumpster. And swallow some damn mouthwash while you’re out there, and take off your coat, so you don’t stink of that stuff. Nothing less pleasant than doing business with a smoker and having them breathe thier foul breath all over you while you’re trying to talk to them.
And I would defintily never hire a smoker for a receptionist type position that is supposed to put a welcoming face before incoming clients/customers/whatever. The smell of smokerbreath is off putting and gross, and unprofessional. For similar reasons, I would also not hire anyone for a receptionist position with visible tatoos or multiple piercings.
Kirk
Clearing a few things up…
1.) A couple posts have mentioned the need to provide a reasonable justification for why you hire or fire your staff. You don’t. Absent a union contract to the contrary, the employer can hire and fire on any basis, however silly and unreasonable, so long as the basis is not illegal.
For example, suppose I own an ice cream parlor. I employ 20 people and have to fire 5 of them to make cost. I can do any of the following entirely legally:
a. fire the first 5 to enter the door that day
b. fire every fourth person to enter the door that day
c. fire everyone wearing pants from the Gap
Those might be silly and unjustifiable reasons to cut my staff. They’re still totally legal (with the possible exception of “c”, if and only if people of one race/gender would be disproportionately impacted by a policy punishing the wearing of Gap jeans.)
2.) This statistic that smokers take more sick days strikes me as suspicious. Without a distribution curve, it’s practically meaningless. Are 95% of smokers taking an extra day or two per year? Or, as is more likely, are the %1 of smokers who suffer a serious illness taking 6 months in sick leave at a time? This makes a REALLY big difference in how one would rationalize his decision to hire only non-smokers.
3.) Breaks. Guess what, if you don’t want smokers running off for smoke breaks all the time, ENFORCE A BREAK POLICY!! When I worked at the grocery store a few summers back, we got a 30 min lunch and two 15 min breaks. That’s the only time during my shift when I smoked, I wasn’t allowed little breaks, so I was absolutely NO DIFFERENT from a non-smoker.
You don’t even need a rigid policy, if you merely require smokers to be reasonable. A lunch hour at Subway Sandwiches (my first job) was pretty stressful. I didn’t run outside in the middle of lunch for a smoke. I waited until the rush died down, because that was the reasonable thing to do. If I had tried to run out during lunch rush, my manager would have told me to wait. Problem solved.
4.) Fair warning to the anti-smoking crowd. These policies might work in suburban office environments. They will NEVER make it into a union contract, that I guarantee. Unions rarely give an inch in the fight for their members workplace privileges, and they won’t budge on this one.
In summation, there are alot of highly qualified, productive, talented people in this world who happen to smoke cigarettes. In the long run, any company enforcing such a policy is shooting itself in the foot. By turning away qualified individuals they place themselves at a competitive disadvantage. This is the reason that race/gender/religious discrimination is doomed to failure, even without the laws that are in place. Discrimination for irrational reasons will only survive where the irrational belief is universal (see race discrimination is the early 20th century), otherwise the forces of competition in a free market will punish discriminatory choices in hiring.
What about the Straight Dope Message Board habit a lot of us seem to have. Would it be okay for an employer to discriminate based on that particular addiction?
Absolutely. If you are unproductive because you spend all your time surfing the web your company has every right to fire you. Apparently my company does not discriminate.
General appearance is ok to discriminate on. In service companies, the people are the product. They want their people to have a similar look and manner to them. Our big joke is when they tell us to “blend in” at the client. Yeah…blend. We are the only people in the building wearing suits and carrying laptop bags. We are obviously either consultants or Brooks Brothers models. It’s not like we are all supermodels or anything. But when we go someplace, you can definitely pick the people who work at our firm (or a similar one) out of the crowd.
Until you hide their cigarettes.
If it affects one’s job performance, then I would argue it’s okay not to hire someone on that basis. In msmith357’s example, his company has certain standards for how their employees must dress. No problem. However, if one’s personal habits in no way impinge upon one’s job performance, than I would argue that it’s not okay to fire/not hire someone for them.
Anecdote time: I have a friend who was fired from her waitressing job as soon as her boss found out she was a lesbian. The boss had been preparing to promote her, but after seeing her out with her girlfriend one night, fired her the next day. No explanation given. Now it’s not like she was macking on female customers or making salacious comments to other employees. Legal? Yes, in North Carolina. Wrong and foolish? Hell, yes.
Neither Playboy nor Christian radio have a place in a professional setting, IMO. When you’re at work, you keep both your religion and your sexual fantasies strictly to yourself.
andygirl wrote:
It is already illegal to discriminate on the basis of a medical condition. (Or at least it is, here in California. I don’t know if this is a state or federal law.)
My position on music in the office is this: Music can be a welcome distraction, provided each person uses headphones. I’m often on the phone, and if you’re playing music, the person on the other of the line can hear it. Religion is a sensitive topic as it is, and I simply don’t think it has a place at work, at least as far as others are concerned.
As for Playboy, sexual material is ***NEVER *** acceptable in the workplace. I don’t care if your environment is all male. It’s not appropriate, acceptable, and anyone who brings it in deserves what punishment they get.
Robin
I think headphones (or having the music way down so that no one else is able to hear it unless they are right up next to the radio) is the only option in these kind of circumstances. And I gather that WV Woman did keep her music down.
Every kind of music (or radio station) will be offensive to someone. I don’t particularly care to have rock music foisted upon me. But I tolerate it almost every frickin’ time I leave the house; believe me, I’m damned sick of it. I wouldn’t want anyone fired for playing it, but do I want to hear it? Hell no.
If a person can be fired for playing a Christian station (because someone “might” be offended by it) than everyone should be at risk for being fired for playing whatever station they are playing. Each station has SOMETHING potentially offensive about it.
So, what I want to know is, was anyone else fired (or reprimanded) for playing their radio at WV Woman’s former job? The way I see it, it’s all or nothing. You can’t cherry pick which stations are “offensive”, because you’ll never be able to get everyone to agree on which stations are offensive, and which are not.
The best bet (if music must be played) is one of those innocuous “Muzak” type things, or at least a station that plays music with no lyrics (Classical, easy listening instrumentals, etc.).
That should be: “then everyone should be at risk for being fired for playing whatever station they are playing.”
Just for the record:
I did not use headphones (I did keep the music down, though). However, I was the only one who worked in my little corner of the office. The other people only passed through my office on their way to the kitchen.
Nobody else had a radio, but then everyone else worked up front with the customers. I was stuck in the back doing the grunt work.
Somebody suggested that perhaps a higher-up saw my little setup and told my boss to ditch me. I think they are right. I never saw a higher up look at my office, but then I only worked part time. A lot could have happened when I wasn’t there.
This guy was extremely anal and had a sad life. (He was set to start training to be an FBI agent and his then-girlfriend, now wife, pitched a fit and so he got stuck selling insurance. Far as I know she’s still dictating his every move.)
I wasn’t sorry that the job ended.
Apos
First we need to differentiate between three different concepts, Justice, Law and Morality. Morality is, well, morality. Justice relates to what aspects of morality can be enforced and how far society can properly go in doing so. Law is (or at least should be) the method by which society implements justice. Obviously, these are extremely sketchy working definitions.
We can see from this that just laws should be moral but that not everything that is moral can be the subject of a just law. To illustrate, society cannot justly implement a law requiring you to donate all of your worldly goods to charity and become an aid worker in Afghanistan. It does not follow, however, that such conduct would be immoral.
There is, of course, no such thing as a perfectly just society under any definition. Justice is just one of the criteria that properly inform a functioning society. For example, considerations of utility are also important. (In fact, some schools of thought equate justice with utility but that’s a side track so let’s not go there.) As a practical matter this means that laws are inevitably a compromise between the ideal and the practical. Politics is, after all, the art of the possible.
**
Here we have an interstice between law, justice and morality. Refusing to work for someone because of their race is immoral. Would it be just for society to create a law making it illegal to not work for someone because of their race? This is a complex question for several reasons. However, let assume that such a law would be just under some particular theory of justice. Would such a law be practical? In ordinary life, no. As you point out, people can simply not apply for jobs in situations where they don’t like the boss. However, in the military, there are such laws. You must “work” for your commanding officer, regardless of your racial prejudices.
IIRC, in the United States, federal anti-discrimination laws only apply to businesses larger than a certain size. (I may be recalling this incorrectly. If so, I trust someone will point it out. The basic point remains, nonetheless.) I believe the rationale for this is a largely a cost-benefit analysis. The impact on society is not considered worth the cost and difficulty of enforcing anti-discrimination laws in very small businesses. Therefore, a sole proprietor can legally discriminate based on race in hiring an assistant. Of course, such behavior, though legal, remains immoral.
Does this failure render all anti-discrimination laws unjust? Of course not. Simply because it is impractical to solve every problem does not mean that you should not try to solve any problem.
**
Once again, not quite. Part of the social contract is that you cannot use your resources in a way that society has determined is detrimental. Exactly what those parameters are is quite complicated and depends on what theory of justice you are using. However, it is just for society to prevent you from using your resources to create a dry cleaning business that spews toxic pollution in an urban area, for example. You can create this business. However, society can justly require you not to harm your neighbors and can require you to capture and properly dispose of your toxic waste.
A similar reasonining applies to discrimination. If you do create a dry cleaning business, society can justly require you to operate it in a manner that does not harm society. i.e., that doesn’t discriminate.
There are other strands of reasoning that get you to a similar place. For example, when you choose to spend your resources to create a dry cleaning business, you are not simply using “your” resources. You are using society’s resources, too. Your business relies on the legal system, the electricity grid, the road system, etc. It is, therefore, just for society to set certain terms for the use of these resources. Note, however, that this does not mean that it would be just for society to place “unjust” restrictions or obligations on your business. In other words, though society can regulate your business those regulations ought to conform to whatever theory of justice you are applying.
One interesting example of this involved the U.S. Supreme Court and discriminatory convenants. These were legally binding restrictions in land titles that prevented the property from being sold to a member of a specified race in perpetuity. The Supreme Court said, in essence. “Yeah, these are legal. Individuals have a right to discriminate, if they want. However, they don’t have a right to use a court to enforce their discrimination. So while discriminatory covenants are ‘legal,’ we aren’t going to enforce them.”
Firstly, i’m not a smoker, and i find the habit disgusting.
That said, i don’t believe employers should be allowed to discriminate based on personal habits such as smoking. This sort of “profiling” seems to me to be counterproductive and, if not illegal, then at the very least unjust. I have worked with some very capable and hard-working smokers, and with some fucking lazy and ignorant non-smokers, and vice versa. I’ve never been able to find a direct correlation between smoking (or not) and productivity in the workplace, and even if such correlations could be found, it is unlikely that they would apply across all industries, and it is likely that many other factors would also play a part.
Now, i will admit that smokers sometimes take more unscheduled breaks than non-smokers. When i worked as a waiter in a large hotel, the smokers would often say to the supervisors, “Can i run outside and take a smoke?” and the supervisor would often permit this. But if i, as a non-smoker, asked “Could i just sit around and do no work for five minutes?” the answer was “no.” And this pissed me off.
But problems like this do not require discrimination against smokers. On the contrary, all they require is that employers stop discriminating against non-smokers in the workplace, and treat everyone the same. If a smoker asks for a break to have a smoke, and the employer would not normally allow such a break to a non-smoker, then the privilege should not be extended to smokers. And if smokers are found to be taking unauthorized breaks to indulge in their habit, then disciplinary action can be taken, up to and including dismissal. Such policies should be made clear to all employees at the time of hiring.
On the other hand, if an employer is a decent human being rather than a slave driver, and if he or she is also an intelligent person, they will also realize that allowing employees to periodically take short breaks (for smoking, or whatever) will probably improve productivity and worker morale rather than being detrimental to the company. Don’t people get driven hard enough at work in our modern society, without also begrudging them an occasional moment or two to take a break and catch their breath? (or, in the case of smokers, pollute it 
)
— Refusing to work for someone because of their race is immoral.—
I agree… but why illegal? You seem to agree with me on this point: that the first does not always lead to the other.
Wouldn’t you say that this especially the case when I do something that doesn’t make you worse off directly, despite being stingy or nasty? Is the moral principle “anytime anyone benefits but I don’t, I should be compensated” really any less crabby or more just?
—To illustrate, society cannot justly implement a law requiring you to donate all of your worldly goods to charity and become an aid worker in Afghanistan.—
But society can demand that if you start a bussiness, that then and ONLY then your assests must be henceforth used to provide certain people with certain services… ?
— Part of the social contract is that you cannot use your resources in a way that society has determined is detrimental.—
But that’s whats so ridiculous. A person who starts a bussiness is NOT making the world worse off EVEN for the person they discriminate against. In fact, they are making things slightly better, by lowering prices. Even if it COULD be argued that it was somehow detrimental that certain groups not have access to the sale of certain goods in every location they wish, why is it the burden of the store owner alone to provide for them? Why not everyone else in society who is failing to provide them with such a sale opportunity?
Look at disability law. Bob builds a three story cheese shop that is wildly popular. Disability law demands that he build wheelchair accessible access to the third and second floor. But what theory of justice could possibly justify putting this burden on Bob? If the wheelchair-bound somehow deserve to be sold cheese by other private citizens, then you and I are JUST as guilty as Bob is of not supplying it to them! Especially if we have the resources to start our own cheese bussiness, but choose instead to start a record store, or just lavish ourselves.
By building his inaccessible store, Bob has not made the wheelchair-bound any WORSE off in their search for cheese (and again: perhaps slightly better off by lowering prices elsewhere). So how can HE and HE ALONE thus be singled out to incur a special burden to provide them with cheese shopping?
Look at Bob’s options. He can either build his cheese store, or build a personal space for his own cheese-orgies. In EITHER case he uses the same resources: but for some reason if he chooses to sell his goods to others, he’s all of a sudden hit with a horde of EXTRA obligations that he never had before. That’s crazy.
I simply don’t see how this logic is sensible or justifiable. It is certainly an account of what has become conventional, but that doesn’t make it just, tolerant, or fair.
Actually, don’t they usually cover that kind of thing by saying something like “professional attire/appearance/attitude”? I think that’s pretty much a polite way of saying “no smelly nosepickers, please”.
Let’s say that I worked in your building, and I put up a poster in my office that said “The Bible is full of lies”, or “Have a diety-free day”, and you saw it. How would you feel? Don’t you think it’s better for us all to just avoid broadcasting our beliefs in the workplace like that?
I used to have a Christian supervisor who harassed me about religion. She asked me if I believed in God. I told her no, and she wanted to know why. Stupidly, I let her engage me in a discussion about the subject. She then went to the office next door and told her friend, “Blowero doesn’t believe in God”. The other woman came over and they both harangued me about God, at which point I got irritated and walked out of the room, which they both took as an invitation to question why I was so “touchy” about the subject. Still not wanting to let the subject drop, my supervisor said “Well, I don’t care what you say - I KNOW I’m right.” A couple days later, she gave me some glurge lecture on tape that was supposed to prove there is a God, and wanted me to listen to it. Well, aside from her aggressive proselytizing, she was a friend, so I didn’t do anything about the incident. But it just seems like common sense to me to leave religion out of the workplace.
Perhaps he was concerned that the other employees would be offended, not just customers.
He didn’t fire you, he just didn’t pick you up as a permanent employee. I don’t think it was very nice of him, if he had lead you to believe you would be picked up, but from what you said, it doesn’t sound like he was actually obligated to.
Having said all that, I don’t see any problem with someone playing Christian music quietly at their own desk. That wouldn’t bother me.
First things first:
I’ll say up front that I am a smoker and in fact am doing so at this moment (reading this thread woke up the nic gremlins :)). I’m only going to address the OP and not get into the religion, music, or other discriminations practiced by businesses.
I’d have to say that smoking has not decreased my productivity at all. I have yet to take a sick day at my current job of 4 years and smoke only on allowed breaks or meal times. In fact I’m more productive than the average employee because I bring my laptop with me while I take a smoke break (and sometimes to lunch) as I program during a good portion of my day. If I don’t take the laptop I’m usually mulling over some difficult code in my head. I try to be considerate of my co-workers in regards to my “smoke smell”. I carry breath fresheners and only smoke outside instead of the inside room set aside for smokers. Sometimes I walk while smoking which decreases the smell even further.
However, I think the employer should be able discriminate against a smoker. For most businesses this only decreases an already sparse applicant pool and is ultimately to their detriment. If the business were say an anti-smoking clinic the discriminatory practice makes more than enough sense. If they were hiring a trucker for long distance hauls it makes no sense at all. If I were the HR director for the company I would simply ban smoking in the building and on all premises controlled by the company. At my job this would either put me in the middle of a highway or on somebody elses property if I wished to smoke. The other option to me is not to smoke during work. This is a viable option for some smokers as evidenced by Horsewife (at least before she quit). More hardcore smokers may just have to find other employment.
Okay, I’ll touch lightly on the race discrimination issue with an anecdote: While stationed in San Francisco there was a nearby bagel shop that sold the best damn bagels I have ever had. I would volunteer to do breakfeast runs for my office as the “runner” got to choose where to get breakfast from. Invariably I picked the bagel shop. I learned after a while that the shop employed only Jewish people as that was the hiring practice of the proprietor (who was Jewish). Whatever his reasoning, whether it was “Jews make better bagels” or “Jews are better workers”, it definitely reflected in the quality of the product. Now, if confronted with buying bagels from two unknown bagel shops but one of them advertised as being “Jewish owned and operated”, I’d definitely give the kosher shop a try first.