Snohomish employer won't hire smokers

Lynda wrote:

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This article however, is talking about not hiring smokers, period. In other words, if you smoke at home, on your own time, over the weekends, on vacation, you will not be hired. THAT is discrimination. Why should a qualified person not be allowed to work

Not according to the courts it isn't discrimination. This is a step that has been taken in a variety of places around the country, with both private and public employers. Challenges have been made, but not successfully.

As for why, look to statistics. They show that:

smokers cost more in health care;

smokers are more likely to take sick days;

smokers are likely to be distracted when they ARE at work, by the withdrawals associated with abstaining from smoking;

smokers are more likely to stretch the limits of breaks in order to get in those last few puffs before going back into an environment where smoking is not permitted.

Beyond that, many businesses thrive on employees interacting during off-hours. Having smokers in the mix puts up a barrier to building a sense of community. Either smokers will resent being required to abstain around nonsmokers or nonsmokers will be enduring the effects of someone smoking around them.

Come to that, if an employer finds the smell of smoke abhorrent, why should the employer have to deal with that when he/she could find a nonsmoker to do the job?

Oh, and nothing in it denies a smoker the right to work. It only denies them the right to work FOR THIS EMPLOYER--at least until they quit smoking. It is, after all, an objection to the activity and the addiction rather than to the person.

Mitrebox wrote:

You mean they wouldn't hire President Obama?

True. Then again, as he is President Obama, he already has a job (and one I hardly envy him).

Should he quit smoking, he might have a shot (and no, I'm not talking in the bar). The info here doesn't go into proof of status. Cotinine levels are used in some places, but just how low they have to go is more than I found.

curiousbystander wrote:

Im guess none of you who are upset over this have heard of 3rd hand smoke.
Even if you wash your hands after you smoke the chemicals are still on your clothes.
I sure wouldnt want some nasty cigarette smoker making my food!

How did we get from health department employees to food service?

Many Hopsitals now wish to only hire non-smokers. They don't even want to smell 2nd or 3rd hand smoke on their workers.

smokers, brown people, poor people, black people,fat girls and old folks should be done away with. they get in the way of government progress.
http://www.youtube.com/watch...

tori loves tori wrote:

smokers, brown people, poor people, black people,fat girls and old folks should be done away with. they get in the way of government progress.
http://www.youtube.com/watch...

Ah, I see. We have only one item in the list that involves identifying a "class" by the connecting link of engaging in an activity.

Sounds like an effort to cast that activity as something beyond the control of the individual engaging in that activity, and yet how can that be? I mean, after all, isn't the basic premise of all the smokers' rights arguments the assumption that smoking is something done BY CHOICE?

Poor little desperately straw-grasping propagandists.