Students who smoke may find themselves unemployed if hiring policies targeting smokers continue, a Boston University professor said in a Jan. 22 article in Tobacco Control, a peer review journal.
BU social and behavioral sciences professor Michael Siegel said hundreds of companies have been implementing policies that prohibit or deter the hiring of smokers. However, not hiring people based on their smoker status is discrimination, Siegel said.
“Discrimination is essentially the categorical denial of employment to a group, based solely on the membership to that group that is not related to job qualifications,” he said.
There are 26 states that have laws prohibiting hiring practices that discriminate against smokers, but Massachusetts is not one of them, Siegel said.
“Right now, Massachusetts has what’s called ‘at-will employment,’ and there’s not protection against this sort of discrimination,” Siegel said. “There’s only protection for race, gender, religion, sexual orientation.”
A former Scotts Lawn Care employee filed a case against the employer for allegedly firing him based on the fact that he is a smoker, according to court documents. The District Court will hearing the pending case on the grounds of invasion of privacy, because the company tested bodily fluids to confirm his smoker status.
Most companies with such policies in place take urine samples to test whether someone smokes cigarettes, Siegel said.
Fallon Clinic Occupational Medicine Chairperson Robert Swotinsky said though he has never had a request for a nicotine test, it does happen.
“One of the problems with nicotine testing is you don’t know if its coming from cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, or Nicorette,” Swotinsky said. “Someone could be trying to stop smoking by chewing the gum, and they’d have nicotine in their system.”
Cotinine is the indicator of whether someone has smoked, Siegel said. However, cotinine levels can differ depending on the last time someone used tobacco.
“It’s a somewhat arbitrary test,” he said.
Weyco, a healthcare provider based in Michigan, fired smokers if they did not quit, Siegel said.
“With most companies, they simply won’t hire someone if they’re a smoker,” Siegel said. “If you worked at Weyco, you got a letter saying, ‘If you don’t quit smoking within a year, you’ll be fired.’”
Four employees have been fired as a result of the new policy, Siegel said.
The American Lung Association, which has a policy against hiring smokers but does not fire existing employees based on their smoker statuses, encourages employers to give employees assistance to help them quit smoking, National Policy Manager Thomas Carr said in an email.
“It would be incompatible with our mission and the public policies we advocate for not to,” he said
There are a few reasons why companies may employ these hiring practices, Siegel said.
“One argument is that smokers cost more because they get sick more, and that drives up healthcare expenditures for companies,” Siegel said.
This creates a dangerous precedent, Siegel said.
“I think you could make the same argument with obesity,” he said. “Companies could say, ‘We’re not going to hire obese people because we want to promote healthy practices.’”
Colleagues have criticized Siegel for speaking out against employment discrimination toward smokers, he said.
“The tobacco-control field, is a religious-like movement where people who speak out against the dogma are viewed like traitors to the cause,” Siegel said. “People have actually accused me of being paid off by tobacco companies.”
Siegel said discriminatory employment policies would not help people quit smoking.
“What it’s going to do is make it harder for smokers to get jobs, especially with unemployment going up,” he said.
Smokers discriminated against in the workplace, BU professor says
Published: Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Updated: Wednesday, January 28, 2009
20 comments
...only the beginning...fasten your seatbelts
Waitstaff wanted
Only those who choose to smoke need apply
If such a situation were evident and some non-smokers lied on their application the owner could not be held responsible, if any harm did occur. [AS IF]Problem solved, would all TC employees leave their washroom keys and ID badges at their workstations and move in an orderly fashion toward the Exit doors.http://www.smokershistory.com/pr...om/ propagan.htm
"It must be borne in mind that everything the propagandist does or says is for effect -- most commonly the effect on fools. The public wants not truth but a show? Very well, he will play the mountebank. The responsibility for the intellectual integrity of the intelligent few is now for the first time in history passed on to the public. In the future, as Mr. Bernays says, "If the public becomes more intelligent in its commercial demands, commercial firms will meet new standards." So with all propagandists. This is to say, as long as the public may be manipulated by misrepresentation and by appeal to ignorance and prejudice, it is the public's own fault if the 'knowing ones' make use of questionable methods. Why worry about being decent, so long as the opposite cause has public approval? Just now it is the rule to be 'low brow,' to come down to the level of the man in the street. In striving for mass action, intelligence exhausts itself in the methods of gaining the attention of the ignorant and stupid...
Besides, nicotine converts to niacin - vitamin B-3 - when smoked or processed, and that apparently registers as cotinine as well, so you'd better be chonically malnourished, or else...
By the way....you don't need a test to prove a smoker...just take a sniff.