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TORONTO - Some Canadian companies are following an American trend of refusing to hire smokers, even if they smoke in their off hours.

A group of Canadian online companies, headed by Momentus.ca, have made it clear on their websites that they only hire non-smokers. It's a policy aimed at lowering health-related costs for employers.

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"The fact that I may be at greater risk for cardiovascular disease or for other health problems because I'm a smoker isn't necessarily my fault and it shouldn't make me subject to discrimination," says ethicist Arthur Schafer of the University of Manitoba.

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At the moment, employers in Canada can't fire their workers for smoking but they are allowed to advertise for non-smokers only.

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Reluctantly (because I hate smoking) I say no. While I don't agree with the ethicist who says being a smoker isn't his fault, I think allowing businesses to control what employees do in their off-hours is an extremely dangerous, extremely slippery slope.

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What is the legitimate business argument in not hiring a smoker - assuming that he doesn't continually bug off to take smoke breaks? Is that they are more absent due to sickness, or because of increased health care costs? In 2005 I doubt a Canadian employer (given the labor and human rights laws) can without any justification simply refuse not to hire a smoker.

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"It's well known that a smoker will get sick more frequently, will miss more time from work, even at work the smoker will likely be away from actual work longer than non-smokers ... and will actually cost the employer a fair amount of money," says Dr. Lew Pliamm of the Quit Clinic in Toronto.

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At least 29 U.S. states agree and have banned employer discrimination against smokers. But in Canada, employment protection for smokers is largely untested, except for one case involving mining company Cominco in British Columbia in 2000.

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I think that this will be fairly easy (or should be) to challenge on civil-libertarian principle. Workers sell their labour, not their souls. If a worker becomes a problem because he is taking too many sick days, then that problem must be dealt with in terms of fair labour practices.

But it should be illegal to make pre-emptive judgements about an individual's health. I am almost sixty years old, and perhaps I will drop dead tomorrow, but over a long working life, chain-smoking much of the way, I believe that I have had fewer than average sick days, fewer bouts of colds or the flu than many of my non-smoking friends, and that's just the way it is.

To me, the grossly unfair fact of my working history has been that the one time I needed time off because of sickness it was because of the sickness of another. I had become a caregiver, and what that meant was that I had to quit work, quite simply. One income, entirely gone -- that's one clever way our economy copes with illness.

But have my own illnesses ever cost an employer a red cent? No.

Obviously, people running a "Quit" clinic can hardly be considered objective ethicists in this context.

[ 21 May 2005: Message edited by: skdadl ]

If you drink socially you can't get a job, if you eat fast food, if you don't exercise X times a week.

The point is: workers should be assessed on the performance of their work. There should be no other standards.

In this case, it's not a "smokers' rights" issue, it's a civil liberties issue, plain and simple. It's none of an employer's damn business what I do in my off-time, period, as long as it's not illegal and it doesn't impair my ability to function on normal terms at work. And by normal terms, I don't mean perfect attendance - we don't expect perfect attendance from non-smokers, therefore we shouldn't expect it from smokers either.

[ 21 May 2005: Message edited by: Boom Boom ]

But I'd like to see it compared to lost time due to skiing accidents, power tool misshaps, poor mixing of ladders and gravity or snowmobiles and trees.

quote:

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Originally posted by skdadl:
again, it is a violation of Charter rights to argue against the liberties of individuals by lumping them into a class.

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Originally posted by skdadl:
I think that this will be fairly easy (or should be) to challenge on civil-libertarian principle. Workers sell their labour, not their souls. If a worker becomes a problem because he is taking too many sick days, then that problem must be dealt with in terms of fair labour practices.

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Skdadl: hurrah! That seems to be a very Canadian attitude and one I applaud. Another reason so many of us down here wistfully look up there. Because, of course, in the US, the employer acts in loco deus.

Examples:

Denver Post: Off-clock beer led to dismissal

Monitoring workers is boss's right, but why not include top brass?

And tongue in cheek from a conservative?

Time for a Democrat Hiring Ban?

With this quote (for real):

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Taking this to the next logical step, Investors Property Management, a Seattle-based company, simply refuses to hire cigarette smokers. But not because of health-care costs. Vice president Dieter Benz says he stopped hiring smokers three years ago because he did not want his company associated with the negative image of cigarette smokers.

"The image of smokers is they aren't well educated, they don't care about themselves or others, they are less mentally stable," said Benz. "We don't want that image associated with our company, so we won't hire them." Wow.

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And I do believe that once smokers have been legally discriminated against for the sake of the almighty company's bottom line, the others - the overweight, anyone with any history of mental illness, etc. etc. will be next in line.

[ 21 May 2005: Message edited by: Américain Égalitaire ]

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Companies in Canada are watching the American situation closely. At Weyco Medical Benefits in Michigan, workers aren't allowed to smoke at work or at home.

"We want a healthy workforce," says Howard Weyer, the company's president.

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Will he be sacking overweight employees next, or those found not to eat enough vegetables? Infuriating.

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Originally posted by lagatta:
If businesses are really concerned with having a healthy workforce, there are lots of positive steps they can take, such as funding smoking cessation programmes, providing on-site cafeterias with healthy food and fitness centres, etc. Finding time to work out, prepare healthy food, and attend smoking cessation clinics can be a real problem for workers, especially those who have children or other "double-working-day" type obligations.

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Originally posted by steffie:
IMO employers should not allow smoke breaks, unless there are similar breaks alotted for all employees. Depending on the type of business (health care, for example) I agree with the non-hiring of smokers. From where I sit, smokers are less productive than non-smokers.

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The cocnern I would have is that if it was legally okay to pre-emptively keep smokers off the job, the legal precedent could easily be applied to women: they might get pregnant and cost the health plan money for all those obstetrician fees.

Let's take it a step further: you can't work here if you are so irresponsible as to have kids at home, because sometimes you have to go off to daycare and pick little Johnny because he's got the sniffles. Ditto for any potential employee who is taking care of an ailing parent at home.

Bad for productivity, don'tcha know.

How about if you smoked a decade ago? Nope, no job for you... you still might get sick. How about if you've never smoked but your spouse chain-smokes? Or maybe you just have a strong family history of cancer?

No, no no, best to keep all such persons out of the workforce. Only strapping, young health mavens who can [i]prove[/] that they get all their vitamins and consume plenty of fibre need apply. That way, they can pay the unemployment taxes to support the rest of us.

[Edited because someone else used the word 'reprobates' while I was posting.]

[ 21 May 2005: Message edited by: Tape_342 ]

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"The image of smokers is they aren't well educated, they don't care about themselves or others, they are less mentally stable," said Benz. "We don't want that image associated with our company, so we won't hire them." Wow

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I am ridiculously well educated. I am probably overeducated. At least, I am educated well enough to recognize this guy as a non-thinker.

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if it was legally okay to pre-emptively keep smokers off the job, the legal precedent could easily be applied to women: they might get pregnant and cost the health plan money for all those obstetrician fees.

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What's a health plan?

Once again, I can only speak from my own experience. Thirteen years ago I was hired by a screen printer only to find out I was pregnant 2 weeks later. My employers were very supportive, moved me to a less-toxic area of the plant, and gave me all the time off I needed. I guess my small-town mentality has a hard time understanding the corporate mindset. Around here, medical fees are paid for by the provincial health plan.

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Originally posted by steffie:
What's a health plan?

snip

Around here, medical fees are paid for by the provincial health plan.

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I don't know what the percentage is of Canadians covered by private plans. Does anyone have those figures?

The private plan commonly covers things like dental care (most general benefit, I think), some drugs (wide variation in coverage), perhaps semi-private or private hospital rooms, and then a negotiated list of other expenses that the government has not included in the core services covered by medicare. Eye exams, eg, were covered publicly in Ontario until last fall; now people must pay for them unless they turn out to be for a medically treatable condition (that just happened to me), but private plans may have taken up the slack for many people.

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Originally posted by RealityBites:
Warts aren't covered.

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Unless they are genital.

Btw A.E., wasn't there an editorial piece in yesterday's NYT suggesting that, in the end, it will be corporate interests in the U.S. that will demand public health coveragw ? Simply put, General Motors and the others simply cannot afford the worker health coverage costs there as compared to Canada and the rest of the developed world.

[ 21 May 2005: Message edited by: James ]

And gee, women who might get pregnant and take maternity leave? Talk about hitting the bottom line? It's not even just the maternity leave either. It's obstetrician appointments, sick days if you happen to be having a rough time with morning sickness, etc. So I guess I can kind of understand it if an employer wants to, maybe, start a policy of not hiring women of child-bearing age, unless of course she gets fixed or something.

And what about people with physical disabilities? Hell, we might have to ACCOMMODATE them. Bad, bad, bad for the bottom line. Too many doctor's appointments, and the ergonomic stuff! And what if they need more breaks due to physical strain of doing repetitive tasks, which can be anything from sitting still at a computer doing data entry or whatever. I guess I can understand the company's perspective in just not hiring those people at all.

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Originally posted by AppleSeed:
I move we can people who stick their fingers up their asses. That could lead to rectal cancer.

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I don't remember ever thinking that the people putting in the most time were necessarily the most productive in any of my office experiences.

I am remembering one managerial phenomenon of one of my office experiences, a manager whose teenage sons were going through a few marginally semi-criminal adventures at the time. Those were taking him away from the office a lot, and yet none of us would have thought of pressuring him, guilting him, for responding to his family first.

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Originally posted by AppleSeed:
You would know more about that than I, Reality Bites.

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Many of the single working moms I know have parents who help them out extensively. I've always been very jealous of women who have this benefit. In fact, this whole thread is making me even more interested in branching out on my own, if only part-time.

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They can say, "No smoke breaks - everyone gets the same breaks, and you can smoke either on your off-hours or scheduled breaks," which I think is perfectly reasonable.

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Fuck off. Who cares if you're queer?
Just don't expect the rest of us to think it's the most important thing in the world.

[ 21 May 2005: Message edited by: AppleSeed ]

[ 21 May 2005: Message edited by: Hailey ]

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Originally posted by AppleSeed:
To RealityBites:
Fuck off. Who cares if you're queer?
Just don't expect the rest of us to think it's the most important thing in the world.

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You can finish the sentence.

I don't like or agree with smoking. If people are taking more breaks than their non smoking counterpart then that should be restricted.

It is dangerous territory though to start doing this because when will it end - someone who does sports on the weekend might be more likely to have an injury? the overweight person might have more health problems? the single mother will need more time off?

On the other hand, I believe that I should be allowed to spit on any smoker that smokes in an area that I happen to be and I have a right to access (seems a fair trade, if they are going to assault me with dangerous smoke I should be able to defend myself with non-dangerous spit ... after a proper warning of course; "sorry, can you put that cigarette out? Your smoke is offensive and bothering me, or would you rather I spit all over you while you assault me with your offensive addiction?".)

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Originally posted by Debra:
So they start with the smokers and then?

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Demonizing smokers is too easy. A few years ago, a freelance friend moved to a new office. She smoked, I smoked. I thought I'd get her a cool ash-tray as an office-warming gift. I went to a local pottery bootique, looked around for a while, then asked: "Do you have any ash-trays?" The woman looked at me as if I had asked for a baby-slicer.

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Originally posted by Hailey:
Well, RB, did miss the "how to smooth the waters" course at times but I don't know that he deserves to hear that anymore than a black person deserves to hear.........

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Originally posted by AppleSeed:
How do you react to trucks and cars?

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I know he's gone but I will answer anyway.

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Originally posted by audra trower williams:
AppleSeed has left the building.

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Originally posted by abnormal:
While Canada is different (increased health costs relating to smoking are born by the taxpayer, not the employer)

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Extended Health Care (Group Health coverage of semi-private hospital room, drugs, dental, eyeglasses and hearing aids) premiums are borne by both the employee and employer. I'm on a Group Health Plan that has just increased their employee premiums to I think a total of $900 which is still pretty low. How about Blue Cross in Ontario - who pays for that?

[ 21 May 2005: Message edited by: Boom Boom ]

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The cocnern I would have is that if it was legally okay to pre-emptively keep smokers off the job, the legal precedent could easily be applied to women: they might get pregnant and cost the health plan money for all those obstetrician fees.

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I think it would be legally valid to refuse to hire smokers. But the legal precedent could never apply to pregnant women (unless the specific job posed a danger to the pregnancy).

The reason is that there is nothing illegal about discrimination, unless it is "discrimination on a prohibited ground."

The prohibited grounds are race, religion nationality, etc. etc.

The underlying idea is that some characteristics are so close-to-the-bone that they deserve protection. Others, which involve simple choices, are not so protected. As I have casually mentioned to my son, wearing numerous rings in one's nose, and colouring the hair blue will likely not be found objectionable by a court.

The "pregnancy" question was decided long ago; it is too connected to what it is to be a woman to be called a mere choice. A refusal to hire a woman because she may become pregnant is simply discrimination on the basis of sex or gender.

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I do not think it would be good policy to discriminate against smokers. But it would be legal.

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According to the CBC reports I heard there's only been one legal opinion on this issue in Canada and that was in an arbitration case at Cominco.

The company lost.

Nicotine is a highly physically addictive substance like alcohol or narcotics. The addiction is every bit as powerful as heroin or cocaine. So its not entirely a matter of choice as to whether one smokes or not. Its not like giving up eating potato chips.

It is illegal under various federal and provincial human rights codes to discriminate on the basis of physical disability. More "enlightened" views look upon addiction as a form of physical disability and that's as I understand what happened in the Cominco arbitration case.

You can find a summary

here

[ 21 May 2005: Message edited by: radiorahim ]

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Originally posted by audra trower williams:
AppleSeed has left the building.

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Originally posted by Debra:
So they start with the smokers and then?

If you drink socially you can't get a job, if you eat fast food, if you don't exercise X times a week.

There's already enough bullshit around trying to get work and keep it, lets not give credence to employers being able to dictate what you do on your own time.

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Hear-hear!. The industrialists wouldn't have dared dictate to worker's or soldiers what they did on their own time during either of the world wars. In fact, leading up to the 1930's, industrialists didn't give a damn if millions of workers were unemployed and malnourished, never mind whether they had pocket money for vices. Why aren't industrialists similarly concerned about Canada's child poverty and how it will affect their longevity or future ability to earn low wages ?.

[ 22 May 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]

Or is it just so hard to quit that it would be unlawful to refuse to hire such people as employees?

If they do, then their "job performance" is affected, because job performance simply means how much work they do at a given cost.

To me, the whole issue is a very interesting one, because it has to do with discrimination on non-designated grounds, ie. not race, or religion, or age. Calling smoking a disability, as in the BC case, does not convince me.

It is important to understand that "discrimination" simply means "treating differently, with negative consequences attached."

But lots of laws discriminate. The income Tax Act, for example, discriminates on the basis of income. Some categories of individual pay different rates, based on their income.

To me, whether a person smokes or not is closer to this sort of category than to the prohibited, ones, race, religion, gender/sex, etc.

quote:

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Originally posted by James:
Btw A.E., wasn't there an editorial piece in yesterday's NYT suggesting that, in the end, it will be corporate interests in the U.S. that will demand public health coveragw ? Simply put, General Motors and the others simply cannot afford the worker health coverage costs there as compared to Canada and the rest of the developed world.

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Originally posted by James:
Btw A.E., wasn't there an editorial piece in yesterday's NYT suggesting that, in the end, it will be corporate interests in the U.S. that will demand public health coveragw ? Simply put, General Motors and the others simply cannot afford the worker health coverage costs there as compared to Canada and the rest of the developed world.

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You may be thinking of this article from Fortune:

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Still, there's a potential common agenda lurking beneath today's health-cost angst. Think of it as a two-step: First, we'd move a chunk of private-sector health costs to government, something business and labor could embrace as a competitiveness booster. Then we'd find ways to guarantee coverage for all while reengineering health-care delivery to lower costs in the long term (without the price controls that stall innovation abroad). Easier said than done, you may say. But seen in this context, the prescription-drug bill last year was the first step in the Republican-led socialization of health spending. Companies have been clobbered funding retiree health plans. The GOP felt their pain, and presto, $750 billion over ten years moved from private to public budgets.

If, as CEOs argue, it's a historical anomaly that they're in the health-benefits business at all, what might the path look like from here to rationality? There would be 1,000 details, of course, and the usual Washington moans and groans, but consider the following conceptual roadmap. Start with a grand bargain that asks current employers to keep, say, 80% of their roughly $400 billion health spending in the game—and pledges to hold them harmless from increases in future health costs. In exchange, business would support the general tax increases needed to plug the $80 billion annual hole this "business health-cost relief" would create.

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[ 22 May 2005: Message edited by: Tape_342 ]

[ 22 May 2005: Message edited by: Tape_342 ]

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To me, the whole issue is a very interesting one, because it has to do with discrimination on non-designated grounds, ie. not race, or religion, or age.

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Well disability is a "designated ground" under human rights legislation... and where there is a disability, employers are required to provide "reasonable accomodation" for that disability up to the point of "hardship".

Addiction is a psycho-physical disability and that's the way the arbitrator in the Cominco case viewed the issue.

Not that I am all that great an enthusiast for time-and-motion studies, but it is possible to measure the performance of workers as workers -- ie, as individuals performing tasks, not as members of some mad taxonomist's grouplets.

It can be shown (and unfortunately, more and more it can be shown) that members of some grouplets will tend, on average, to be more valetudinarian than members of others. By jeff house's logic, among the benefits about to be brought to us by advanced genetic research will be mass unemployment for people determined to belong to one of the more vulnerable grouplets, and that in order to protect the insurance companies.

The statistics on who costs more are, of course, like all stats, infinitely playable-with. If, on average, smokers die sooner, then they extract less money from private and public pension funds, eg.

But the issue to face re: employment is that we are individuals. We are not averages. Averages are not mainly made up of people who hit the average: they are also made up of people who fall short of it or far exceed it.

And in a civil society, when we are talking about employment -- the alternative to which, at the moment, is starvation -- we must have some ground rules for agreeing that everyone has the right to work on grounds of capability, not group or grouplet membership.

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Well disability is a "designated ground" under human rights legislation... and where there is a disability, employers are required to provide "reasonable accomodation" for that disability up to the point of "hardship".

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How true.

But I am saying that there is no certainty that the higher courts will decide that smoking is "a disability".

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skdadl wrote:

I don't remember ever thinking that the people putting in the most time were necessarily the most productive in any of my office experiences.

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There is a vast difference between hard work and good work. I don't know how many times I've heard people complain "I put hours in on this, I worked all weekend". I appreciate the effort but at the end of the day the results can still be crap.

Smokers who grab a few extra breaks now and then? Anyone should be able to do the same thing. It seems the important thing is to get the task done. If you can do it in 15 minutes and goof off for the rest of the day, great.

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Anyone should be able to do the same thing.

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At my office we have a few employees who'll run downstairs for another smoke break when things are slow. And this one guy who checks babble when things are slow.

The other off work behaviour that is subject to discipline is directly competing with the empoyer, such as a carpenter who works for a construction company who in her spare time starts her own construction company.

In a case that I read about recently, a company's plan to terminate smokers at an industrial plant producing dairy products was quashed at arbitration as there was no demonstrable negative effect on the business that outweighed a workers substantial right to engage in a legal practice on thier own time, including break time. There were several alternative measures discussed by the arbitrator, such as moving the smoking area to the back of the plant, shuffling break times when there would be customers in the plant, etc.

Smoking does not have to interfere with production. Breaks should be taken as outlined in your Union contract. If you don't have one, the labour standards in your jurisdiction should still apply, poor as they may be. Smoke on your break, simple as that.

Smoking should not interfere with your co workers health. Designated smoking areas should be provided, and used.

Smoking should not cost your employer any more than other lifestyle choices that are made by other workers. Supplemental health care coverage is a negotiated benefit in a Unionized workplace, and as such the costs are included by the employer in it's labour cost calculations along with wages, vacations, overtime premiums, etc. If the costs of coverage increase, bring it up at the bargaining table.

If the anti smoking corporate lobby gets it's way, we will soon be dealing with companies who don't want to hire, or will fire, people with any health condition, exposure or likelihood of exposure in the employers eyes to HIV, poor sleep patterns, left handedness (lower life expectancy), marital status (married people live longer).

Imagine talking around the water cooler about how quitting smoking to save your job resulted in some irritability around the house, and now your spouse has left you. Your employer calls you in and states that as you are now single, you are more likely to die sooner and are now a burden on the employer provided life insurance and as such are being let go. Or, it could go the other way. You happily announce your marriage plans to your co workers, and start handing out invitations. You are called into the bosses office and told that as you are going to likely live longer, you are causing an unfunded liability on the pension fund and you might have kids, which could increase your absenteeism, so you are fired, but come back and reapply if you get divorced because we love your work.

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We need to understand that this is not about smoking. It is about our employers right to approve or disapprove our off work activities. We can never let them get the kind of foothold that they are looking for here.

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I agree with Slimpikins' statement of the law, generally speaking. If your off-hours activities impact upon your job performance, or the perception of your job performance by well-informed members of the public, then the employer
may make decisions based upon this fact.

So, does smoking affect such things as attendance?
In the long run, it probably does. It is an empirical question, though.

If the answer to the question is, "it does have a negative effect on attendance", then the employer may take it into account. That is, he or she may do so unless smoking is "a disability". As I have said, I am not confident that it is.

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Originally posted by slimpikins:
If the behaviour causes a negative perception that demonstrably impacts the employers business, then off work behaviour is grounds for discipline at work. Some examples would be a teacher who is a member of the Nazi party, or a social worker who works part time at an escort agency.

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Welcome to babble, slimpikins!

I personally think that example is terrible, though. It's none of my employer's business whether I work for an escort agency in my off hours. How could that possibly impact my job as a social worker?

If I were in that position, I'd fight that one tooth and nail. First of all, there's nothing WRONG with working as an escort. Secondly, as long as I'm not disclosing anything about my clients at the social work agency, there is absolutely no way that my position as an escort can be in conflict with my position as a social worker. Thirdly, it's none of my employer's damned business what LEGAL things I do during my off hours as long as it doesn't affect my job.

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I should be allowed to be a stripper if I want to be, or heck, go to bathhouses, or swinging clubs with my five sexual partners that live with me, or orgies, or whatever the hell I want to go to, without any professional consequences.

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Designated smoking areas should be provided, and used.

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Why should an employer have to go to the trouble of providing a seperate space for their employees addictions? I don't think that's entirely reasonable. If whether an employee smokes is none of their damned business, then doesn't it logically follow that it isn't their responsibility, either?

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Originally posted by slimpikins:
I did hear some anecdotal evidence that the social worker was 'discovered' when she was dispatched to entertain at a stag party attended by her male supervisor, but I don't have any tangible evidence.

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