We have discussed this issue before, especially a few weeks ago, when "60 Minutes" reported.
Here is a story from the WSJ. I don't understand why they fire these employees. They can refuse to include them in their group health insurance - one more reason to move away from employer-provided insurance - or they can increase their premiums.
I really hope that such companies will get law suits on their hands that they won't know what hit them.
(BTW, I am not a smoker, but not many things rile me as an employers sticking their noses in the private affairs of their employees and this includes drug testing, when there is no reason to do so)
A Company's Threat: Quit Smoking or Leave
Scotts Miracle-Gro Joins Ranks Of Employers Trying to Cut Costs by Targeting Smokers
By ILAN BRAT
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 20, 2005; Page D1
Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. is taking its campaign to stamp out smoking among its workers to an unusual length: It's threatening to fire smokers beginning next fall. The threat represents the latest attempt by an employer to try to reduce health-care costs by targeting smokers. In January, four employees at Weyco Inc., a small medical-benefits administrator in Okemos, Mich., lost their jobs after they refused to be tested for tobacco use. Scotts, which has 5,300 U.S. workers, is one of the largest companies to have put an outright ban on smoking even off the job.
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Weyco, the medical-benefits administrator, announced a tobacco-free policy in Sept. 2003. It used a device similar to a breathalyzer to test for tobacco use. In January 2005, four of its 190 employees chose not to take the test and were forced to leave. Scotts offers to pay for smoking-cessation programs and products. But the October ultimatum "is way over the top by today's standards," said Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, a coalition of major corporations. "Most employers are still in the mode of 'You've got to have positive incentives.' "
Firing workers who won't stop smoking is illegal in the 30 states that have laws protecting smokers, according to the National Workrights Institute, a not-for-profit organization that focuses on human rights in the workplace. But elsewhere, unless workers fall in one of a few protected classifications defined by state and federal laws, employers have more leeway. Some lawyers said Scotts could be vulnerable to disability challenges if it fires people who smoke. "Once you start regulating outside conduct, the question is where do you stop?" says Marvin Gittler, an employment-law specialist and managing partner with Asher, Gittler, Greenfield & D'Alba Ltd. in Chicago.
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Write to Ilan Brat at ilan.brat@wsj.com
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113504483617427043.html (subscription)