Company Fires All Employees Who Smoke

[giza]

http://www.thekcrachannel.com/news/4125477/detail.html

Let's see if I have this straight:

- Weyco wants to prevent employees from engaging in lawful activity outside the office, even if job performance is not affected
- Weyco does not compensate employees for telling them how to spend their own time[1]
- Weyco then fires said employees for what they do outside of the office

Conclusion:

- I think Weyco is going to get sued for an unlawful firing.

What a bunch of jerks.

[1] Some companies that require employees to carry beepers outside of the office have been known to compensate them in some way, such as paying them hourly if they have to come in to fix something, or granting them a day off for being on-call over a weekend. When the company offers you something in exchange for restricting what you do outside of the office, I'm cool with that. But when companies pull a Weyco and say, "You can't do this, AND we're not going to give you anything in return", I have a serious problem with that.

Comments welcome.

Comments

[melskunk.livejournal.com]

I don't like smoking, but fuck them! That's mainstream assery. I mean, what's next?
("Oh, BTW: buttsex means you may raise our health premiums so NO GAYNESS KTHNX!!")
I don't think a workplace is a place for smoking, but home? Well, forget them.
Seriously, I can just see companies not hireing people in 10 years unless they've got perfect helth, to avoid raising their insurance costs... >:(

[aureth.livejournal.com]

According to an analysis I heard last night, this is completely legal.

I have to call a WTF, though. It's nuts.

[giza.livejournal.com]

I think it might depend on what law is being applied. For example, if it's discrimination law, then yeah, smokers are not a protected class.

I'd be curious as to the wording of some of the laws that pertain to unlawful firings, though. I really question the legitimacy if trying to tell employees what to do outside of the office. It would be like Coke firing an employee who drinks Pepsi on weekends.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

While I don't care for smoking, I hope Weyco gets sued into oblivion for this. What's next? Drinking? Unmarried sex? Having a Democratic bumper sticker on the car?

[freakylynx.livejournal.com]

O.O

Wow... I can't see how they'd get away with something like this.

[firedhusky.livejournal.com]

sounds like a sucky place to work at !

Some limits should be imposed to protect what people do in their private life.

After all, people doesnt seem to realize that work is not life and... life is not work.

Life exist beyond the office hours.

FDH

[malamute.livejournal.com]

The outrage over this amuses me. Certainly its legal to do what they did there in Michigan. They are a state, much like here in Texas, where companies have the lawful right to hire and fire at will anyone they please for whatever reason they please short of all the standard disability/gender/race/etc reasons.

So they can do what they did. Any employer in an "at will" state can do that. The real question is will their company suffer long-term from rejecting otherwise qualified workers just on the grounds that they smoke?

And really this is not too far off from employers refusing to hire or employ people who use drugs. Regardless of whether certain drugs are legal or illegal, companies don't really want unproductive addicts working for them, and it sounds like this company simply included cigarette smokers in that category.

[zenmouse.livejournal.com]

Cigarettes are a drug, potentially more addictive than most others, however, I disagree with the 'unproductive' part of your comment. What is unproductive is this company's waste of resources to enforce this policy. Drug tests, especially.

I do believe this is entirely legal, considering 'at will' employment.

This guy in charge there is declaring a holy war for health, he will pay for it, most other companies won't, so you're right, not much of a reason to get upset.

[malamute.livejournal.com]

Well, weigh the costs of drug testing against the increased costs of paying health insurance policies for smokers. Have you seen how much more expensive health policies are for smokers vs. non?

As far as productivity, there's no doubt in my mind that non-smokers tend to be more productive than smokers. This coming from a person who has smoked cigarettes on and off for the past few years; its the breaks that do it. When you have to put down everything you're doing, go outside to smoke multiple times per day, there's no doubt at all that its wasted time, usually time the company is still paying the employee for. And all those breaks add up to a lot of wasted time that the company pays for on top of the increased costs of insurance policies for them.

So while this executive will probably be saving the company a lot of money he might also be filtering out potentially excellent employees with truely developable skills that could make the company increasingly profitable. He's taking a risk, but given the probability that there are probably plenty of potentially excellent employees that do not smoke, he might win this one.

[giza.livejournal.com]

>Have you seen how much more expensive health policies are for smokers vs. non?

I'm sure it's alot. Now, if the company passed those costs onto the workers in the form of payroll deductions, I'd have no problem with that. They stop smoking, they pay less. I tihnk that's totally fair.

>When you have to put down everything you're doing, go outside to smoke
>multiple times per day, there's no doubt at all that its wasted time,
>usually time the company is still paying the employee for.

I have to disagree with this on multiple points:

1) Productivity. The Senior Engineer at my company smokes, as does my boss. When they are outside smoking, they tend to have informal meetings and discuss work stuff. Myself and other pepole have been asked to step out at multiple times while they smoke to meet about stuff with them, too. In fact, those short meetings with them are the only real meetings I have to deal with at my job. It's rather productive and I like the arrangement.

2) Company time. Where I work, we're paid salary. There's no concept of company time, just what you get done. Some days we work more than 8 hours some days we work less.


On an unrelated note, #1 is the reason why, 7 months after being bought by $BIG_COMPANY, we still have our 8-person office outside of Philly, instead have been relocated to Boston. We've been so productive that the Corporate Gods have decided to leave us where we are until at least the end of 2005.

*is a non-smoker, BTW*

[zenmouse.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I wasn't really weighing in the whole break thing. Most places where I've worked everyone got two 15 minute breaks, and that's where you had to sneak in the smoke, along with lunch.

I wasn't aware that companies had to foot the bill for smokers' insurance difference, or even that there was one. Wouldn't it make more sense to just pass the cost onto the employee? That would make them quit, their job or smoking, without having to institute policy that appears to be discriminatory.

I think the risk involved is completely dependent upon the job and the pool of people to draw from. The higher the skill required to do the job, the longer it takes to fill it, the smaller pool of people to draw from, it makes it a lot harder to enforce such a policy. Also, if you had a lot of positions to fill, turnover was high and training expensive, you wouldn't want to do it then either. In fact there's quite a few scenarios I can think of that this policy wouldn't work with. The only one that I can think of that it will is an occasionally open highly competitive position with a large pool of applicants. Low turnover too, mostly likely.

I will argue that I think that the company had other options that would have appeared less draconian. Maybe not as cost effective, but compromise is a value of any company with good employee relations.

My two cents...

[patchoblack.livejournal.com]

Fire people just because they are smokers? Though I don't think much of smoking, I must agree I think it is harsh. Now, I think a company would be within their rights to say "No smoking on company time." In other words, if you are on the clock, you can't just go off for a puff.

I'm sure someone will say "What's next? No restroom breaks? No getting something to drink?" Well, everyone has to go to the restroom at sometime, and getting thirsty is natural enough. However, smoking is something a person has chosen to do, it's not something that the body required, so an employer should not have to make allowances to allow an employee to light up.

[wendingo.livejournal.com]

That just stinks of a law suit. And I'm shocked A Union hasn't gotten involved.

[cheetor.livejournal.com]

SOunds Just like Drug testing..... but ist getting worse

HTTP://www.norml.co.nz

USE your head, think for yourself, Question Authority

[giza.livejournal.com]

>Question Authority

It usually doesn't know either. :-(

[wolffit.livejournal.com]

In many states, employment is "at-will". This means that the company can terminate your employment at any time, for any reason, including for no reason, as long as the termination does not violate anti-discrimination laws.

Firing someone for smoking off-the-job is not discriminatory.

If the people fired worked in an at-will employment state, then their individual terminations for smoking off-the-job are lawful.

Now, if Weyco fired a sufficiently large number of their employees, they might fall prey to laws governing mass layoffs - these laws require things like N days notice and/or compensation packages.

Otherwise, the ex-employees are SOL.

[wolffit.livejournal.com]

Ah. Followup, after reading the actual article.

The policy says the company CAN fire employees who smoke.

What actually happened was they fired people who refused to take a test to see if they smoke or not.

THAT could violate privacy laws, as cigarettes are not otherwise illegal and thus a test to determine their use may not be permitted by anti-drug laws.

[firestormsix.livejournal.com]

It does apear that this company is believing they "own" their employees, and can order them to do what the company says. Those fired employees could probally fight the company in court, and probally win it through some loophole or privacy violation, and sue them.
It seem a litte harsh that the company manipulates their employees like that.

[zorinlynx.livejournal.com]

I hate cig smoke myself, but this is ridiculous. Most smokers I know go outside to smoke, and otherwise don't bother anyone when they do. Why does a company care about smoking?

Are they afraid of lost productivity over smoke breaks or something? People have been taking smoke breaks for decades, and now it's suddenly a problem?

I'm tired of all this crap lately. Drug tests are one thing; you probably don't want your new employee to be a pothead, but cig smoke? Come on...