← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · il ragno
Thread ID: 16664 | Posts: 20 | Started: 2005-02-08
2005-02-08 23:24 | User Profile
[I]I used to refer to these humorless do-gooders as [B]no-smoking Nazis[/B]; perhaps they should instead be characterized as [B]Der Kommisars of Karing[/B].
The fact of the matter is that companies like Weyco are overextended, have been for years and years, and are now trying to maintain their equilibrium by simply ruling their employees' lives like feudal lords dictating to serfs. Sick days, personal days, health-related sabbaticals...those things add up. And our CEOs - our corporate oligarchs - have now gotten so used to earning $20 and $30 million in salary, dividends and 'bonuses' every year - while those doing the actual [I]work [/I] scramble around for 30, 40, 50 grand a year, keeping one eye on the finance company, one on their bills, and the one in the back of their heads on Jose and Apu and Vang creeping up from the rear - that regimenting their lives like so many indentured servants is now the most natural thing in the world to them.
Fresh air and sunshine are good for you too. Maybe Weyers will next threaten any employees who don't give up their weekends to paint his boat for him when ordered to.[/I]
[QUOTE][B]Company's Smoking Ban Means Off-Hours, Too [/B] By JEREMY W. PETERS, The New York Times
OKEMOS, Mich. (Feb. 8) - Warning: Cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your job.
That is what employees at Weyco, an insurance benefits administrator in this small central Michigan town, found out.
Under a new policy that legal specialists say is the first of its kind, Weyco began testing its 200 employees for smoking in January. And the company put workers on alert: In the future, they will be subject to random testing. If they fail, they will be fired.
Rather than take the mandatory breathalyzer test, four employees left the company.
And while Weyco's strict no-smoking policy is drawing the ire of civil liberties groups, it is within the bounds of employment law in Michigan. The state is one of 20 that has no laws preventing employers from firing workers who smoke even when they are not at work.
"What's next?" Kary L. Moss, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, said, speculating on other behavior that could cost workers their jobs. "Sitting in the sun? Getting pregnant?"
In fact, employers in 46 states have significant legal leeway to tell workers what they can and cannot do once they leave the office. As a result, companies have done more than tell workers not to smoke.
Until the mid-1990's, the airlines enforced policies that limited how much a flight attendant could weigh. In the 1980's, Electronic Data Systems, the computer software company founded by Ross Perot, had a policy barring facial hair, and fired an employee who said that he wore a beard for religious reasons. In 1989, a company in Indiana fired an employee for drinking after work, a violation of the company's no-alcohol policy. And just last September, a company in Alabama fired a woman who drove to work with a Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker.
But firings for behavior away from work have been isolated, and legal specialists say that no company has ever gone as far as Weyco.
"They're actually testing," said John F. Banzhaf, a professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the executive director of Action on Smoking and Health, an antismoking group. "Most of the companies as far as I know simply passed the policy and rely on the fact that employees made the pledge." Employers have targeted smokers for years. Since the mid-1980's, Alaska Airlines has refused to hire smokers and tells job applicants that they will be tested for nicotine use. In 2004, Union Pacific decided to stop hiring smokers and now asks applicants to disclose whether or not they smoke. But these companies and others that prohibit their workers from smoking rely on their employees to honor the policy. As long employees have said they do not smoke, that has been proof enough. Activists for workers rights argue that unless employees are engaging in off-duty behavior that interferes with their work, employers have no business stepping in. In 30 states and the District of Columbia, it is illegal for companies to impose smoking bans on their employees when they are off duty. And while 13 states prevent companies from banning alcohol use off the job, only California, Colorado, New York and North Dakota have broader worker privacy laws that prohibit employers from regulating most legal activities when their workers are off the job.
"Once you cross the line and allow employers to control any type of behavior that's not related to job performance, there's no limit to the harm that can and will be done," said Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute, an employees' rights organization based in Princeton, N.J. Howard Weyers, the soft-spoken, silver-haired president of Weyco, said he initially approached a smoking ban with a similar attitude. "I'm with a client one day and he told me, 'We're going to stop hiring smokers.' And I said, 'You're kidding me,' " Mr. Weyers said in an interview from his office at Weyco's headquarters. "I reacted just like everybody else did: 'You can't do that.' Oh, yes you can."
Mr. Weyers, 70, is a former college football coach who exercises five times a week. He says the smoking policy is not so much an issue of workers rights as a health issue. "I spent all my life working with young men, honing them mentally and physically to a high performance. And I think that's what we need to do in the workplace."
As a medical benefits administrator, Mr. Weyers has also seen how health care costs have risen, in part because of the high cost of treating smoking-related illnesses. A 2002 study by the Centers for Disease Control found that annual productivity losses and health care costs were $3,391 a smoker. Mr. Weyers said he could not afford anything beyond the $750,000 to $800,000 he already spends on health care costs each year.
So a year ago, he told his employees they were all going to be charged a $50 smoking fee. The company would waive the fee for employees who passed a nicotine test or, if they failed, agreed to take a smoking cessation class. The company brought in a smoking counselor, and Mr. Weyers said that as a result, about 20 employees kicked the habit.
For those who did not quit smoking, Mr. Weyers told them they had until Jan. 1, 2005. After that, mandatory testing would begin, and anyone who failed would be fired.
"You work for me, this is what I expect. You don't like it? Go someplace else," Mr. Weyers explained in an interview.
After 14 years at Weyco, Anita Epolito decided she would go someplace else rather than be forced to give up smoking.
"You feel like you have no rights. You're all alone. It's the most helpless feeling you can imagine," Ms. Epolito, 48, said. She is now searching for a new job. "I never, ever from day one conceded to go with his policy because I knew that it had nothing to do with smoking. It had to do with my privacy in my own home."
For Christine Boyd, 37, a Weyco employee and smoker of 10 years, the threat of losing her job was enough to get her serious about quitting. "I had to choose between whether I wanted to keep my job and whether I wanted to keep smoking. To me it was a no-brainer." On Jan. 27, Ms. Boyd celebrated a year of being cigarette-free.[/QUOTE]
2005-02-08 23:30 | User Profile
The Lefty anti-smokers are a real mystery to me...I suppose that they are trying to justify their bizarro platforms by redefining "deviancy" (I know that neo-Con extraordinaire Krauthammer coined this phrase, but even a broken clock is right twice a day, IMO)
It makes perfect sense why the Captiol Hill thugs like Johnny McCain propagandize against tobacco...they do it to justify their strong arming of big tobacco...in other words, the tobacco racketeers led by McCain took a page from the book of Tony Aacardo and engaged in an old-style shakedown...while justifying it under the auspices of paternalistic concern.
However....The "true believers" are truly pathological...they tend to think that men having sex with men in public bathrooms is A-ok but smoking a Lucky Strike is a crime against humanity.
2005-02-09 00:24 | User Profile
I've never smoked and never will, but this guy is unbelievably annoying.
Mr. Weyers, 70, is a former college football coach who exercises five times a week. He says the smoking policy is not so much an issue of workers rights as a health issue. "I spent all my life working with young men, honing them mentally and physically to a high performance. And I think that's what we need to do in the workplace."
I've seen this guy on TV, and he looks pretty old and withered...apparently all his exercising didn't get him much for his old age--there's plenty of smokers who look better than him.
This guy deserves to have someone toss a brick through one of the plate glass windows of his company's building every day at 3 a.m., no matter how many times they get the panes replaced, for as long as he has this policy in place. That'd make his insurance rates go up.
2005-02-09 00:26 | User Profile
I've heard this jerk interviewed on the radio. He said that he was thinking about going after fat people next. The only way I would side with this person would be if an employer was allowed discriminate who he wished to hire. That means race, religion, sex, etc. Of course this won't be allowed so I hope this s.o.b. gets his butt dragged into court. I think that this sort of lording over the hired help is going to be seen more and more in the future unless it is stopped. :smoke:
2005-02-09 00:31 | User Profile
Now everybody sing:
[QUOTE]Some people say a man is made outta mud A poor man's made outta muscle and blood Muscle and blood and skin and bones A mind that's a-weak and a back that's strong
You load sixteen tons, what do you get Another day older and deeper in debt Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store
I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal And the straw boss said "Well, a-bless my soul"
You load sixteen tons, what do you get Another day older and deeper in debt Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store
I was born one mornin', it was drizzlin' rain Fightin' and trouble are my middle name I was raised in the canebrake by an ol' mama lion Cain't no-a high-toned woman make me walk the line
You load sixteen tons, what do you get Another day older and deeper in debt Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store
If you see me comin', better step aside A lotta men didn't, a lotta men died One fist of iron, the other of steel If the right one don't a-get you Then the left one will
You load sixteen tons, what do you get Another day older and deeper in debt Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store[/QUOTE]
2005-02-09 00:49 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Thomas777]The Lefty anti-smokers are a real mystery to me...I suppose that they are trying to justify their bizarro platforms by redefining "deviancy" (I know that neo-Con extraordinaire Krauthammer coined this phrase, but even a broken clock is right twice a day, IMO)
It makes perfect sense why the Captiol Hill thugs like Johnny McCain propagandize against tobacco...they do it to justify their strong arming of big tobacco...in other words, the tobacco racketeers led by McCain took a page from the book of Tony Aacardo and engaged in an old-style shakedown...while justifying it under the auspices of paternalistic concern.
However....The "true believers" are truly pathological...they tend to think that men having sex with men in public bathrooms is A-ok but smoking a Lucky Strike is a crime against humanity.[/QUOTE]This type of hypocrisy reminds me of Al Gore, and his strong stance against tobacco, and his sob-fest story about his sister's death from lung cancer. And then we find out, surprise, surprise that Mr. honest, and squeaky clean do-gooder liberal recieved huge donations from tobacco farmers and the tobacco companies, to finance his campaigns, even after his sister's death.
2005-02-09 01:15 | User Profile
If the anti-smoking do-gooders in the government are so adamant about banning smoking then why don't they just prohibit the sale of tobacco altogether?? I mean, isn't that the eventuality anyway of making it harder and harder for people to smoke? If it's as certain as the sun rising that all smokers die at 50, then why are cigarettes even on sale?
It's all about shakedowns, kickbacks, corruption and most of all, control over people's lives and nothing whatsoever about "caring" about anyone's health.
Pharmecutical companies make billion$ on cancer treating drugs, right? They'll just poison our food if their cancer patients start dwindling because of no-smoking laws.
2005-02-09 01:22 | User Profile
[QUOTE]
Pharmecutical companies make billion$ on cancer treating drugs, right? They'll just poison our food if their cancer patients start dwindling because of no-smoking laws.
[/QUOTE]the numbers of cancer patients will go down to some extent, but there will be still plenty of people who will get cancer, not related to smoking. but you have hit upon the reason there will never be a cure, or at least a cure that is made available, for cancer.
2005-02-09 01:45 | User Profile
This is about "efficiency", i.e., cutting down on sick days, sick leaves and insurance costs.
I can understand Weyco trying to shore up waste in their organization - but I'd like to discover a little more about their in-house institutional investing as well....see how much of a bath they've taken if they, like every other gimlet-eyed corporate entity the past 10 years, spread themselves out too thin trying to squeeze every last penny out of the go-go 90s.
I also would like to point out that stories like this will become more and more commonplace as a direct result of our leaders' 'policies' re immigration and H-1B headlice. Anybody who thinks employers aren't looking longingly at Mexicans and Punjabs: their cost-effectiveness, their desperation, their compliance to bullying, their - well....their slave-like properties - when they push the envelope like this simply hasn't been paying attention. I got five bucks says Weyco is [I]already [/I] outsourcing work overseas, and - if they take heavy flak and/or lawsuits for this little endaround - will be shipping in the H-1Bs like gangbusters within two or three years.
But think of how much easier unemployment will be when you're [I]not [/I] feeding a pack-a-day habit!
2005-02-09 04:27 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]This is about "efficiency", i.e., cutting down on sick days, sick leaves and insurance costs.
I can understand Weyco trying to shore up waste in their organization - but I'd like to discover a little more about their in-house institutional investing as well....see how much of a bath they've taken if they, like every other gimlet-eyed corporate entity the past 10 years, spread themselves out too thin trying to squeeze every last penny out of the go-go 90s.
I also would like to point out that stories like this will become more and more commonplace as a direct result of our leaders' 'policies' re immigration and H-1B headlice. Anybody who thinks employers aren't looking longingly at Mexicans and Punjabs: their cost-effectiveness, their desperation, their compliance to bullying, their - well....their slave-like properties - when they push the envelope like this simply hasn't been paying attention. I got five bucks says Weyco is already outsourcing work overseas, and - if they take heavy flak and/or lawsuits for this little endaround - will be shipping in the H-1Bs like gangbusters within two or three years.
But think of how much easier unemployment will be when you're not feeding a pack-a-day habit![/QUOTE] Look, I think that cigarette smoking is a terrible habit, but at the same time, the theory that it drives up the cost of insurance immeasurably is logically flawed.
Insurance costs are driven up by people who live to be elderly, and "hang on" for years while fighting debilitating illnesses that are associated with aging. A 50 year old smoker who dies of lung cancer is NOT causing insurance companies to pay out as much as a 94 year old widow who has been institutionalized with alzheimer's disease for 22 years.
Last time I checked, humans all have a 0% survival rate...people who die younger are more "cost efficient" than people who live to be very old.
2005-02-09 11:06 | User Profile
Meyers is an asinine fool. He'll windup spending more in unemployment insurance payouts and defending this policy in litigation than he ever would in slightly increased healthcare insurance. It's like paying $200 to counterfeit a sheet of a hundred $1 bills.
2005-02-09 12:38 | User Profile
[QUOTE=PaleoconAvatar]This guy deserves to have someone toss a brick through one of the plate glass windows of his company's building every day at 3 a.m., no matter how many times they get the panes replaced, for as long as he has this policy in place. That'd make his insurance rates go up.[/QUOTE] Yes, that would be poetic justice. Instead of quitting this little Stalin those folks should have made him fire them.
Here's another area that Weyers can look into to see if he can save some money if this pratice is permitted. He should do a study to see how much listening to talk radio costs his company in terms of lost productivity and errors caused by paying more attention to what Sean, Rush, and Neal are saying instead of doing their jobs. There has to be a lot of waste here not only having someone gabbing on the phone, but also from being on hold. The time wasted here more than offsets someone leaving for five minutes to smoke a cigarette I bet.
2005-02-09 19:26 | User Profile
Mr. Weyers, 70, is a former college football coach who exercises five times a week. He says the smoking policy is not so much an issue of workers rights as a health issue. "I spent all my life working with young men, honing them mentally and physically to a high performance. And I think that's what we need to do in the workplace." Nicotine actually makes you more alert and better able to concentrate, much like caffeine. For this guy to insinuate that smoking is somehow bad for your mental performance is ridiculous. The anti-smoking hysteria is just another symptom of our modern civilization's obsession with control and uniformity. Control people's opinions through propaganda on television, control people's speech through political correctness, and control their daily lives with draconian anti-smoking measures. Sure, smoking is unhealthy, but it is also enjoyable (at least to many people.) Deep-fried foods are unhealthy. Working at a computer all day is unhealthy. Driving in a car is dangerous. Leaving your house in the morning is dangerous. Part of being an adult (at least in more civilized eras) is deciding what kind of trade-offs of safety and health you are willing to make for enjoyment. Gentlemen have been enjoying brandy and cigars for hundreds of years. Some other people obsessed about their diet and never smoked a puff. And guess what? They're all equally dead now.
2005-02-09 19:34 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Deep-fried foods are unhealthy.[/QUOTE]
Yes, I like my biscuits and gravy!
2005-02-09 20:02 | User Profile
Sert, I'm a Southern boy; I like everything deep-fried -- fried chicken, fried catfish, hush puppies, hash browns. Good stuff.:thumbsup:
2005-02-09 20:21 | User Profile
Once - on a dare - I ordered (and even ate half of) a deep-fried muffelata, with a side of batter-fried pickles. I think it took a few hours for my blood to begin circulating again after [I]that [/I] meal!
2005-02-09 20:28 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]Once - on a dare - I ordered (and even ate half of) a deep-fried muffelata, with a side of batter-fried pickles. I think it took a few hours for my blood to begin circulating again after *that * meal![/QUOTE] Ragno, You wasted half of a perfectly good deep-fried muffeletta?! I hope you at least finished off the fried pickles. :wink:
2005-02-09 20:41 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]Once - on a dare - I ordered (and even ate half of) a deep-fried muffelata, with a side of batter-fried pickles. I think it took a few hours for my blood to begin circulating again after [I]that [/I] meal![/QUOTE]
Hopefully you had a nice cigarette or cigar after that meal. I know I would've. :smoke:
2005-02-09 21:28 | User Profile
I wonder if this jerk allows same sex partners of employees to collect benefits on their insurance policies. I bet he does. Homosexuals of both sexes tend to have unhealthy livestyles and males in particular cost more if they get AIDS. Also it gets expensive for the company if a person changes partners as rapidly as homosexuals do. What these people do to each other is much more injurious and life threatening than smoking ever is. I know a few insurance sales people who tell me that they don't sell insurance to homosexuals because they are too great a risk for the company, so it makes me wonder why companies want to pay the higher rates for homosexuals if they are looking at the bottom line.
2005-02-09 21:33 | User Profile
[u]Short answer is[/u]: they've got the political cover to stick it to smokers, the New Child Molesters when it comes to PR, and they don't for homosexuals, one of the "protected" classes.
I'm surprised, frankly, that insurance companies can get away with not covering gays, as that sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. They must have to find other reasons to not issue a high-risk policy like that.