Tom’s Garage

I read an interesting article where an employer fired 4 of its workers for refusing to take a test which could determine whether or not the employee smokes, at all! I don’t object to the notion but I do find the justification kinda weird. The article indicates that the employer does not want to incur higher healthcare costs by employing smokers. Well, what about folks who eat too much? Or have unprotected sex on a regular basis? Or mouth off to guys twice their size at football games? What if your employee drinks too much and likes to skydive after downing a case of Lucky Lager? Those healthcare costs can be much higher than a smoker who dies suddenly of a heart attack.

Personally, I think an employer (you know, the person taking the financial risk) should be able to hire/fire at will. But since that is (mostly) not allowed in this country for some strange reason, it seems odd that one could get away with noodling down to this one *legal* activity for their cause of action while being unable to fire someone who stuffs bacon in their pie-hole at every meal. Interesting [possible] double standard emerging. Where’s the ACLU?!?

UPDATE: I should disclose that I am a smoker and I love bacon.

Tags: You're Not Interested

This entry was posted by tom on Tuesday, January 25th, 2005 at 10:19 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.