Surgeon Generals Warning: Tobacco May Lower Your Productivity
By jimrob | June 17, 2008
Employers ponder tough tactics to halt smoking
Weyers, owner of a health care benefits administrator in Lansing, Mich., gave his 200 employees an ultimatum in 2004: Quit smoking in 15 months or lose your job. He refused to hire smokers. Ultimately, he extended his smoking ban to employees’ spouses and monitored compliance through mandatory random blood testing.
Weyers’ method, while effective, wouldn’t fly in California because the state has laws that prohibit employers from making hiring or firing decisions based on employee participation in a legal activity. But participants in a smoking cessation forum hosted Monday by the Commonwealth Club of California found the idea nonetheless intriguing.
“We’re talking about ending an epidemic. This is a global pandemic,” said Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, likening Weyers’ approach to controlling an outbreak of disease.
How is a chosen habit an epidemic? People choose to smoke, and they can choose to quit. If you whiney-assed liberal types weren’t so hell-bent on taking care of everyone cradle-to-grave, this wouldn’t be a problem.
California, on both the state and local levels, has been at the forefront of anti-smoking efforts with laws to ban smoking in public places. A law went into effect in January that prohibits drivers from smoking when children are in the car. Still, smoking costs the state an estimated $8.6 billion in direct medical costs and $7.3 billion in lost productivity a year, according to the California division of the American Cancer Society.
In addition to lost work hours, employers have a vested interest in getting their workforce to kick the habit, given that they pay a large portion of health care costs and are the main source of health insurance for more than half the population.
This is what ticks me off. I’m a human being. I am not a source of productivity for my employer. I’m paid to be there at a certain time; after that, they have nothing to do with me. When did we grant businesses the right to monitor us continually to ensure their “investment” in us is going to pay a return?
My employer is doing something like this. If I want health insurance next year, I have to let them do “biometric testing” on me to see how healthy I am. If there is a problem, such as high body fat or whatever, they assign me a counselor to “work on it.” I’m looking for a new job.
Safeway Inc. announced that its Pleasanton headquarters will become smoke- and tobacco-free as of July 1, with the ban extending to all regional offices in Canada and the United States as of Sept. 1. Safeway already requires nonunion employees who do not participate in smoking-cessation efforts to pay more for their health premiums and is in discussions to extend the policy to union workers.
Safeway prefers to influence its smokers through incentives rather than penalties, said Larree Renda, an executive vice president with the grocery chain. “Our focus right now has been one of being supportive and trying to help people quit smoking,” she said.
Renda took considerable heat from audience members because she works for a company that espouses healthy lifestyles but sells tobacco products. Renda said Safeway has no plans to quit selling tobacco because it does not dictate what legal products its customers should buy, and ceasing cigarette sales would put the company at a competitive disadvantage.
Translation: We really don’t care whether or not our employees smoke. It’s all about the cash we may potentially have to spend on tobacco-related illnesses, and lost work hours that cost us sales. Cigarettes are evil if we have to pay to heal the person made sick by them, but great when we’re the ones selling them and making a profit.
Topics: Business Gone Mad |
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