You smoke? You're fired!

[bigred]

Re: Re: Re: Re: You smoke? You're fired!

The government does not give us rights. Our rights do not come from them or any human authority. The businesses have the right to do so; it's just being infringed by these government practices.

This simply isn't true. Check the Constitution for starters The gov't in fact outlines and enforces a wide variety of rights, which in fact they've increased over the years. Of course it works both ways, as they also restict our rights in various ways as well.

But since smoking is quite legal, I don't see how (legally, never mind logically or morally) a company can get away with denying someone a job or even firing them for smoking, UNLESS they can show it impacts the company in a direct, negative way...and "we don't like it" doesn't exactly qualify. Even then it could be debatable, depending on the specifics.

 

[shanek]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: You smoke? You're fired!

Is that supposed to make any sense at all?

I'm asking which way you think it should be: that anything not specifically made illegal is legal, or anything not specifically legalized is illegal?

 

[shanek]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: You smoke? You're fired!

This simply isn't true. Check the Constitution for starters

1) The Constitution came from the people, not the government. 2) The Constitution does not grant rights. Read it. All rights are assumed to already be in existance. It doesn't give us the rights; it specifically prohibits the government from infringing on them.

 

[crimresearch]

Being fat is quite legal..being left handed is legal...being ugly is legal...being less smart is legal...
And employers are allowed to choose smart, attractive, slim, right handed employees all day long.

They are also allowed to choose non-smokers.

And they are allowed to fire employees who lie about a condition of employment.

 

[Tony]

Like I said in the other thread. Stuff like this is crap. This guy should be sued and be put out of business. This is not a feudal state, you are not the property of your boss, therefore, the boss has absolutely no right dictating your personal behavior, it's really as simple as that.

 

[Beth]

And if all of them decide they won't hire pipe smokers?

Well, you can give that up.

What about if they decide not to hire anyone who ever smoked a pipe?

Good thing Libertarians believe in welfare, eh? Whoops!

Maybe all those pipe smokers could band together and open a speakeasy (an illegal bar) where people can both smoke and drink. That'll get them off the streets anyway!

Beth

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

Like I said in the other thread. Stuff like this is crap. This guy should be sued and be put out of business. This is not a feudal state, you are not the property of your boss, therefore, the boss has absolutely no right dictating your personal behavior, it's really as simple as that.

He is not dictating your personal behaviour. You are perfectly free to choose to smoke or to choose to work for him. You just can't choose both.

 

[Tony]

He is not dictating your personal behaviour. You are perfectly free to choose to smoke or to choose to work for him. You just can't choose both.

Hence, he's dictating personal behavior. Your post is classic double-speak.

 

[CFLarsen]

As I have explained to you numerous times, they come from our own intellect, the fact that we are able to evaluate decisions and be responsible for their outcome.

Really? You argued the exact opposite point here:

So, where do they come from? God? Or are they natural laws?

For the fiftieth time, it doesn't matter, so long as the rights are considered to exist outside any human authority. No government can grant them or take them away. And neither can any international authority. We have these rights because we have the ability to make decisions, act upon them, and be responsible for their consequences.

If the rights exist outside any human authority, who gave them to us? How did they come into existence?

No one. We just have them. As I have said to you time and time again, and said so in the very post you just replied to, we have them because we are capable of making a choice, carrying out, and accepting the consequences.

Source

I asked you who are considering them, but you never answered. Now you have: Rights are a social construct.

And any social construct can, of course, be changed. They do not exist outside any human authority.

But you also say that they do.

I'm confused. Or, maybe you are.

 

[Tony]

I'm confused. Or, maybe you are.

It's cognitive dissonance. It's his way of both wanting personal rights and totalitarian capitalism (aka the mythical freemarket), which as this case shows, is impossible. Unbridled private power is just as much a danger to freedom as government power.

 

[username]

While I do support the right of employers to hire or not hire whomever they wish for whatever reason they wish (not counting the anti discrimination laws) I do have a problem with the testing.

I can support drug testing for safety reasons for some jobs such as those that involve driving, operating dangerous machinery etc, but I don't see that someone who smokes cigarettes at home poses any safety risk to anyone.

I also don't like this indiscriminate testing, I think what is inside a person's body is not something that ought to be subject to searches without due process. I don't believe the coercion of employment is a justifiable reason to require someone to waive rights over what is in their body.

The interior of the employee's home is not subject to a search, why should the inside of their body be?

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

Hence, he's dictating personal behavior. Your post is classic double-speak.

You have no more a right to work for him than he has a right to force you to do so.

You have the choice of whether he is the sort of person you want to work for, he has the choice of whether you are the sort of person he wants to employ.

Both of you have freedom of choice. Nobody is dictating to anybody. What you want is a right to choose your employer without the employer having a similar right as to who he chooses to employ. It is YOU who proposes giving someone the ability to dictate anothers behavior, not me.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

Don't unions exist in the US?

Yes, but their power varies from state to state.

 

[crimresearch]

Like I said in the other thread. Stuff like this is crap. This guy should be sued and be put out of business. This is not a feudal state, you are not the property of your boss, therefore, the boss has absolutely no right dictating your personal behavior, it's really as simple as that.

He is not dictating your behavior away from work...he is testing to see if you lied about a condition of employment.

In the nanny state, the government/courts would step in and force the mean old boss man to hire and keep any employee who wanted the job...

But thankfully, we don't live in the kind of totalitarian state that Tony is rooting for, where working hard to own a business means that you check all of your rights at the door, and let the government run your company into the ground with employees you don't want forced down your throat.

 

[username]

You have no more a right to work for him than he has a right to force you to do so.

You have the choice of whether he is the sort of person you want to work for, he has the choice of whether you are the sort of person he wants to employ.

I agree with you in theory, just not in practice.

First, there is rarely an equality of power in employment negotiations. An employment contract is a negotiation. For negotiations to be fair an equality of power needs to be present.

Second, I believe the role of government is to protect the rights of individuals. Individuals have a right to privacy in terms of searches of their home, body and personal effects. To allow an employer who has more power in the negotiation than the employee to require the employee to waive those rights is something I believe government has an obligation to prevent.

Third, I think there are limits as to what information an employer has a right to know about the employee. Whether or not one smokes is not material to how good or bad an employee will be.

Lastly, requiring smokers to pay a higher premium for their health insurance is always an option.

I simply don't see any valid reason for an employer to be able to test/search anyone to find out if they are smoking anymore than I believe an employer has the right to know how many sexual partners the employee has had, or whether they enjoy getting tied up and whipped in the bedroom.

An employer can say 'no sex on the job' just as they can say 'no smoking on company time'. That is fair.

Peeking into their private time is not fair nor do I believe it ought to be legal.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

Or sharecroppers.

Just one more reason why heath insurance should be directly purchased by the end consumers, employers should have absolutely no part in this transaction.

Actually, I don't think that employer sponsored health insurance as part of a benefit package is such a bad idea. Generally, your employer can get you on a group plan that gives you much more insurance for the same amount of money than the employee can generally get on his own.

So the employer is giving something to the employee that is worth much more to that employee than it costs the employer to provide it. i.e. The ability to get insurance that costs $400/month that would cost the employee $600/month to buy on his own might be worth $200 to the employee, witht the employer mostly paying administrative costs. So the employee gets insurance $200/month cheaper and the employer has found a way to make his pay & benefits package $200/month more attractive so it seems pretty win-win to me.

 

[Cleon]

This just seems weird to me.

I've worked for a fair number of companies, from a stuffy 100-plus-year-old financial institution to small IT startups. I just can't picture any of them having the sheer chutzpah to try something like this. Even those who declared the "right" to conduct random drug screenings never actually employed it.

But then, I'm one of those guys who's hostile to office dress codes; if a company I worked at came out with a policy like this, I'd look for a new job ASAP. And I don't even smoke.

(Of course, the company I work at now is pretty lax. There was an incident around the time I started where an employee was smoking a joint in the parking garage--it got caught on security camera. He received a stern warning not to do it on camera again.)

 

[bigred]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: You smoke? You're fired!

I'm asking which way you think it should be: that anything not specifically made illegal is legal, or anything not specifically legalized is illegal?

I get the impression I'm being baited, but wtf I'll answer anyway....

If you're talking in a strict sense ie the "specifically" part: neither. For ex. it isn't SPECIFICALLY laid out anywhere (excluding maybe some obscure local law) that it's illegal to whack somebody's ear off, but clearly that's illegal under more general terms of assault or what have you.

 

[Glacian]

Oh, yes, that's worked so well with marijuana, heroin, and cocaine...and it worked so well for alcohol in the '20s...

Well, alcohol won't remain in your system so random drug tests at work wouldn't do smack for that, and they, for the most part, can do a fairly decent job in testing people for coke and marijuana in the work place - how about tobacco? I don't think this is a fair comparison because, while illegalizing it wouldn't stop people from growing tobacco in their own yards or that sort of thing, it would effectively justify companies putting it under their "no tolerance" drug policies, testing for it, and firing people who show up positive.

That would pretty much solve the problem here, it'd just open its own can of worms. Personally though, I think it's a can of worms worth opening. To hell with cigarettes, they don't do anyone any good and I'd bet the main reason most people smoke is simply because they are incapable or haven't put forth sufficient effort to quit. Nearly every smoker I've known has mentioned dozens of times "Oh...I'm going to quit..." "Oh...I know it's bad for me..." If people think they have the "right" and "free will" to smoke, i cast serious doubt on that when they have an addiction as strong as a cigarette addiction.

 

[Tony]

You have no more a right to work for him than he has a right to force you to do so.

Wrong on both counts. Let's look at them one-by-one.

You have no more a right to work for him

I have the right to work for anyone I want, just as I have the right to own a $50,000,000 masion. Do I have the qualifications to work for anyone and everyone? Do I have $50,000,000? No, but that doesn't change the fact that I have the right to those things.

than he has a right to force you to do so

Since when? I was under the impression that employers did have the right to tell you what to do on the job.

You have the choice of whether he is the sort of person you want to work for.

Not really, it's his company, he's the boss. Since when are employees able to fired their bosses?

he has the choice of whether you are the sort of person he wants to employ.

No he doesn't. He can't choose not to hire me if I'm a black guy, he can't choose not to hire me because of my religion. He can't fire me for having kids, or going to the bathroom, getting married, reading certain books.

Both of you have freedom of choice.

Yes, we do. I (and he) can choose to smoke, he (and I) can choose whether he (we) wants to run a business or not.

Nobody is dictating to anybody.

Yes, he is.

Main Entry: 1dic·tate
Pronunciation: 'dik-"tAt, dik-'
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): dic·tat·ed; dic·tat·ing
Etymology: Latin dictatus, past participle of dictare to assert, dictate, frequentative of dicere to say -- more at DICTION
intransitive senses
1 : to give dictation
2 : to speak or act domineeringly : PRESCRIBE
transitive senses
1 : to speak or read for a person to transcribe or for a machine to record
2 a : to issue as an order b : to impose, pronounce, or specify authoritatively c : to require or determine necessarily <injuries dictated the choice of players>

What you want is a right to choose your employer without the employer having a similar right as to who he chooses to employ.

No, I don't. I want the harmless personal freedom of every citizen to be upheld.

It is YOU who proposes giving someone the ability to dictate anothers behavior, not me.

That's a lie. I never once said the employer couldn't smoke/read/have kids/get married/ or do anything he wants while not on the clock. I suppose you're now going to say that because I think an employer shouldn't be able to rape his employees that I am dictating his behavior.