You smoke? You're fired!

[Tony]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Touching the OP

Well, Tony, I see that you're a mystic. I customarily withdraw from the scuffle when dealing with those.

I am now a "mystic" because I recognize the context of the discussion?

I thought I was talking about dim-bulb self-poisoning and its well-earned consequences.

Which, in this case, is a personal freedom.

 

[Tony]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Touching the OP

I particularly liked the part about slipping ' smoking ' in there with being black and Catholic..

Thanks.

There is a lot more to human rights than I ever imagined.

Don't forget personal freedom.

What did you imagine?

Do you smoke Tony?

Occasionally, not enough to be considered a smoker though. And I never smoke at work.

 

[crimresearch]

...Why don't you impress us with someone who really knows the Constitution, and show us the laws, or legal rulings that prohibit an employer from choosing non-smoking employees?

You are the one who brought up the courts after all.

Tony?


Tony?



Oh well, apparently he isn't participating in this thread any more.

 

[username]

That's all reasonable.

But the problem is that you're still taking away the freedom of the business owner to decide who they employ.

I don't view it that way. I am limiting the ability of an employer to discriminate on the basis of legal activities that have no bearing on the employer. I am limiting the ability of employers to pry into their employees private lives.

If I don't want to hire someone because they give me a bad vibe I can refuse to hire them because they give me a bad vibe. I have no problem with this.

What I am against isn't the ability of an employer to hire whoever he wants, it is the ability of an employer to pry into private lives or discriminate against private, legal behaviors their employees might engage in.

It's perfectly legal to crusade for the legalization of child pornography. But as a business owner, the activities of your employees outside of work has a direct effect on your success.

Rarely. Very rarely. If I raped someone tonite, would you be concerned with who my employer was? Would you view my employer negatively because I as an individual raped someone?

If you discovered that a prominent child porn advocate was on your staff, do you really feel you should be forced to keep him? Or if you discovered his activism in part of the pre-employment screening, would you appreciate being forced to ignore it?

I wouldn't have to ignore anything about a candidate that made me uncomfortable. I wouldn't want to see a hiring practice that discriminated against folks with any particular political or social belief though. The difference is whether this is an employer rejecting a particular candidate for whatever reason or whether this is a formal hiring policy directed against a particular group of qualified, law abiding people.

I think we also need to make a distinction between private companies and publicly traded companies. I am much more tolerant of a private company having such restrictive policies than I am a publicly traded one. A private company is much closer to an individual deciding who he wants to hire to mow his lawn. A publicly traded company isn't in the same category.

The problem is that those on your side of the argument are not concerned with the rights of the business owner, whatsoever.

This isn't true in my case. It might to surprise you that less than 2 years ago I was every bit as much a libertarian as Shanek. Card carrying member as a matter of fact. Today I don't label myself as such because I have come to believe that libertarian ideology, while quite beautiful in many respects, is an ideology that believes too much in absolutes. It doesn't see shades of grey. Libertarianism would still have employers discriminating on the basis of gender, race, religion and all that due to the belief that employment is purely a private contract entered into by equals. Libertarians, in my view, would believe that market forces would correct these evils.

I am concerned with the rights of the business owner, but I am also concerned with the rights of individuals to have their private, legal actions left as such. I am very concerned about the coercion involved in requiring an employee to submit to a smoking test or lose his job. I believe an imbalance of power exists in such a relationship. If there wasn't an imbalance of power then why is sexual harrasment illegal? Couldn't the employee just quit if she didn't want to have sex with her employer? Go find a boss who didn't insist on lunchtime sex? Having to tolerate sexual harrasment as a condition of employment isn't reasonable and neither is having to modify one's private, legal behaviors one does on his own time.

There are many laws that regulate what an employer can demand of an employee. I won't defend all those laws, but I will say the underlying reason such laws can exist is because the law recognizes that an employer usually has more power in the relationship than the employee. In theory both are free to part company, but 99.9% of the time parting company is far more traumatic to the employee than the employer.

When employers use this leverage to require unreasonable demands from employees it ought to be libertarians speaking against this initiation of force.

Unfortunately libertarians|free marketers often get so hung up in their theories of a perfect market correcting all wrongs that they don't see the use of coercion in this case as being an initiation of the use of force that employees ought to be protected from.

 

[Tony]

Tony?


Tony?



Oh well, apparently he isn't participating in this thread any more.

Stop lying and maybe I'll address your points. Kinda hard to do though, since your points are based upon lies:

You are the one who brought up the courts after all.

I have yet to bring up the courts in this thread.

 

[shanek]

Yes it is a false analogy. The boss doesn't loose his job, his income, his kids don't starve and he doesn't face the potential of loosing his house if the employee quits.

And the employee does? Oh, I suppose all that happens to the employee if he can't find another job...but by the same token, all that happens to the employer if he can't find any one to replace his employees who have gotten fed up adn quit. Then he goes out of business.

This is just an example of how one-sided you are. You assume the employee is in the worst possible straits, while the employer is sitting pretty.

This is a rational rebuttal.

No, it's not. It's name-calling. This in no way whatsoever represente feudalism.

Unless you can show how employees swear fealty oaths?

You're not thinking. You completely missed my point. Do more thinking and less reciting of dogma.

Ah. And you're apparently completely unable to clarify what you meant.

Answer these questions straight:

1) Is there a contract holding the employment agreement to a certain term?
2) If the answer to #1 is "yes," is there anything in the contract where the employee agrees to not smoke?
3) If the answer to 31 is "no," then how does either side not have the ability and the right to terminate the agreement at any time they want, for whatever they want?
4) Can the employer force the employee to stay and work for him under any conditions, or does this restriction on their arrangement only work one way?

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Touching the OP

Which, in this case, is a personal freedom.

Since when does personal freedom include impinging on the personal freedom of others.. ( employers, fellow employees who are forced to share the cost of self inflicted health problems & etc.. )

 

[Tony]

When employers use this leverage to require unreasonable demands from employees it ought to be libertarians speaking against this initiation of force.

What do you think I'm doing over here?

 

[shanek]

Because I tend to ignore non-sequitors and dogma.

Translation: I can't come up with a rebuttal so I'm just going to call it names and hope nobody notices.

Funny, pretty much EVERYONE has said that about you at one point or another.

Well, let's just go by what the Constitution says. The Constitution DOES NOT place any restrictions on you or any business. You are under NO obligation to follow the Constitution. The Constitution is ONLY there to define government, give government its powers, and restrict it from behaving in certain ways. That's why everyone in government is required to swear an oath to support the Constitution, and none of the people living their own lives are.

 

[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.

OK, Tony...as long as we have your word that you never brought up the courts on this issue.

 

[shanek]

He does if they all quit...

Or at least if enough of them quit that he doesn't have enough people to run his business.

 

[username]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Touching the OP

Since when does personal freedom include impinging on the personal freedom of others.. ( employers, fellow employees who are forced to share the cost of self inflicted health problems & etc.. )

Smoking on one's own time away from those who do not wish to be exposed to second hand smoke doesn't impinge upon anyone's rights anymore than the homosexual who gets HIV from consentual butt sex does.

There is no necessary reason why a smoker's health care costs need to be paid by non smokers. Beside that, I think you will find the data which showed smokers to have higher medical costs to have been fraudulent. Smokers, according to the CDC, die earlier and faster thereby resulting in lower health care costs. Folks who die 13 years before the average (CDC stat) generally don't sit for a decade in a nursing home at taxpayer expense.

 

[shanek]

I don't know.

Then I'll tell you: Either production suffers, everyone else there must work harder to meet production, or someone else has to be called in on his day off. There's just no other option. It's gotta be one of those three, your insane and off-subject ramblings about "libertarian dictators" notwithstanding.

 

[Tony]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Touching the OP

Since when does personal freedom include impinging on the personal freedom of others.. ( employers, fellow employees who are forced to share the cost of self inflicted health problems & etc.. )

Since when does being tied up in those obligations include a forfiet of rights. You're trying to make the same argument some socialists make for wanting ban smoking and fast food, ie, it's cost on health care.

Any evidence that the case here is as how you've described it?

In the last thread on this subject, Ladyhawk has this to say:

Ok. Forgive me, but this is going to be a little lengthy. I've been in the health care industry for over 2o years. Time for a little Insurance 101 training here.

First off, most employee benefit enrollment forms don't even ask if a person smokes. And, it doesn't matter if it does, because most people lie about their smoking, anyway. Ok? So, how does an insurance company determine what the employer's insurance premium payment should be? There are several factors, two of the most important of which are: demographics and actual experience.

To wit: if an employer has 100 employees, 50% of whom smoke, their premium will be raised based on a.) the likelihood that a %age of those 50% will develop lung cancer or other respiratory diseases and b.) the actual number ($ amount) of claims filed by the employer's personnel over the last benefit year....regardless of the condition behind the claim. With me so far? Ok...

So, in summary, an employer pays increased premiums based on the actual claims submitted by its employees (claims experience) than on what a given subset of individuals within the employee base does. That's why actuaries have jobs, folks. If employees quit smoking, they may not develop lung cancer or other respiratory diseases. But, if the remaining population delivers a lot of premature babies, or experiences heart attacks, then the health insurance premium is still going to increase.

Please don't misunderstand me, here. Having quit smoking myself some years ago, I would be the first to tell anyone the benefits of quitting. BUT....I was successful only because I was ready and willing to quit. Mandates from friends and close family had not been successful and only left me resentful and spiteful.

If we hand over the reins to employers to be the moral compass of each of us, look out! How far will we be from having employers mandate other behaviors outside of work? Think about it.

Do you have information she, as someone in the industry for 20 years, doesn't have?

 

[username]

Or at least if enough of them quit that he doesn't have enough people to run his business.

In practice this theory doesn't work. That is why we have antidiscrimination laws.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

When I really think about this, my biggest objection to the companies actions isn't so much the smoking prohibition, it is the fact that the company feels it can order blood tests to enforce it. It is the means they use to enforce it that I find truly objectionable.

Here's why it bothers me. Buried among all the stuff I signed when I started my current job was an agreement not to give away company secrets. This is a reasonable request. And I would find it reasonable if the company wanted to monitor my phone calls and outgoing company e-mail to enforce it. It would even be reasonable for them (though it would annoy the living hell out of me) if they wanted to look at what I carried out the door every day to make sure I was upholding that agreement.

But where does their right to enforce that agreement end. Do the people who agree that the company has a right to do blood tests on the smokers to ensure that they aren't smoking at home also agree that my company should have the right to tap my home phone or monitor my home e-mails to enforce that agrement? After all, I agreed not to give away company secrets and I am free to go find another job if I don't like it.

 

[username]

What do you think I'm doing over here?

Thing is in some circles I am known as the libertarian as well.

I think it would be more accurate to label myself as a civil libertarian than (political) libertarian these days.

 

[Tony]

Translation: I can't come up with a rebuttal so I'm just going to call it names and hope nobody notices.

I can come up with a rebuttal, all you say in response to it would be more theory and dogma. Ultimately, talking with you is as wasteful as talking to a fundie. Neither of you are prepared to think outside your self imposed box.

Well, let's just go by what the Constitution says. The Constitution DOES NOT place any restrictions on you or any business.

It doesn't?

So a business can force you to convert to a religion and not speak your mind? 1st amendment.

A business can force you to give up your guns? 2nd amendment.

A business can quarter it's soliders, against your will, at your house? 3rd amendment.

A business can serach your house and your property without a warrent? 4th amendment.

A business can compell you to implicate yourself in a crime? 5th amendment.

A business can delay justice and your day in court? 6th amendment.

A business can prevent you from voting?

You are under NO obligation to follow the Constitution. The Constitution is ONLY there to define government

This is silly to the extreme. I cannot force someone from speaking their mind, and I can not force someone from buying a gun. I have a legal obligation to respect the constitutional rights of others.

give government its powers, and restrict it from behaving in certain ways.

It also recognizes natural rights.

 

[Tony]

Then I'll tell you: Either production suffers, everyone else there must work harder to meet production, or someone else has to be called in on his day off. There's just no other option.

Now you're contradicting yourself. According to you, it's a voluntary arrangement, those other employees don't have to do anything.

It's gotta be one of those three, your insane and off-subject ramblings about "libertarian dictators" notwithstanding.

The thing about a psuedo-libertarian dictatorship was in response to your statement regarding congressional genocide. Keep up.

 

[shanek]

In practice this theory doesn't work. That is why we have antidiscrimination laws.

It is? I'd like to see some support for that.