Company Fires All Employees

[CircleTheWagons]

The company could have taken two alternate steps.

 

(1) Put a cap on how much you will spend on employee health insurance. The truth of the matter is, employee-provided health insurance is not a right. It's a benefit. Provide coverage up to, say, a beginning HMO plan, and make employees pay additional if they want to upgrade beyond that.

 

(2) Don't fire the smokers, but eliminate smoke breaks and change your hiring policy to state that you will no longer hire smokers, while offering incentives for current people to quit.

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I agree except for explicitly stating that you won't hire smokers. Everything else sounds like it would be well within normal company policies and a lot less controversial.

[bills_fan]

The company can do whatever the hell it pleases. A job is not a right. This company should be able to employ whomever they want. Don't like it? Work for someone else.

 

It really can't. But lets not get into protected classes (gays, women, minorities etc.). Lets say that I own a company, and decide that all employees will get on a scale, and be weighed. In the ineterest in having more good looking people, I will fire all employees who are more than 10 lbs over their optimum weight/height requirements. You and a bunch of others refuse to get on the scale. You're all fired. Ya think I may be sued? Damn right I will and I should.

 

Now, smokers will never be deemed a protected class and I'm certainly not an employment lawyer, but these people may very well have a cause of action for at the very least, emotional distress.

[Realist]

This is ridiculous, if you could fire smokers for raising the cost of insurance, you could then terminate all overweight people, all homosexuals, everyone with diabetes, all women (don't forget, they can get pregnant), everyone over 35 (because they should be getting mammograms for women and men should start getting their colon checked). Where will it all end, it won't. It all fits under the heading of discrimination. They just found an excuse for discriminating against smokers (No, I don't smoke and I don't like when people smoke by me).

 

The only way to legally keep smokers from working for you is to change your smoking policies as some companies have done. This was mentioned earlier in the thread, make it more difficult for smokers to practice their habit. Make smoking on the grounds illegal, that way they have to actually leave to smoke. Firing people because they smoke is absurd.

[stevestojan]

Make smoking on the grounds illegal, that way they have to actually leave to smoke.  Firing people because they smoke is absurd.

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Exactly. I actually enjoy it. Even though I smoke, I don't like having to walk through a group of people standing by the entrance smoking. Also, I smoke less because of it. Win-Win.

[IDBillzFan]

It really can't.  But lets not get into protected classes (gays, women, minorities etc.).  Lets say that I own a company, and decide that all employees will get on a scale, and be weighed. 

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You can't compare smokers to a 'protected class' because they are not now, nor will they ever be, a protected minority. A black person didn't CHOOSE to be black. But a smoker CHOSE to be a smoker. These are two totally different things. Likewise, a fat person...unless otherwise proven genetically...chose not to be thinner. So if you don't want fat people in your office, then you should not have to hire fat people.

 

Consider this: a company has a new position to fill, and they post the position internally, and one of the requirements is that you must have a Masters Degree to apply for the job. Some people chose to get a Masters Degree. Can an employee with the company sue the company because they aren't eligible for the job simply because they don't have a Masters Degree?

 

It's a job requirement. You either fill it or you don't, and that is determined by the choices you make. If you don't fill the requirements, then how is that the fault of the company?

 

Personal accountability. Don't have any? Get some.

[Fake-Fat Sunny]

It really can't.  But lets not get into protected classes (gays, women, minorities etc.).  Lets say that I own a company, and decide that all employees will get on a scale, and be weighed.  In the ineterest in having more good looking people, I will fire all employees who are more than 10 lbs over their optimum weight/height requirements.  You and a bunch of others refuse to get on the scale.  You're all fired.  Ya think I may be sued?  Damn right I will and I should.

 

Now, smokers will never be deemed a protected class and I'm certainly not an employment lawyer, but these people may very well have a cause of action for at the very least, emotional distress.

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Actually in our society everyone is guaranteed the ability to sue anyine (as long as they have the cash to file the suit which is actually one of the primary limiting factors on gratuitous suits though this is routinely ignored as a factor which has led to the vast majority of suits being filed by corporations rather than individuals).

 

However, no one is guarantted that they will win their suit.

 

In the farfetched hypotherical you described (taking into account that extreme cases are generally worthless in setting the rules for the whole) if the company took its actions in a totally arbitrary and capricious manner (decision-making documentably driven by totally non-work related criteria like looks, no paper trail of warnings by the company, no rational action to comply with reasonable company standards) the plaintiff might win a wrongful dismissal suit.

 

However, in this general case if the company can make a case that: its actions and smoking impact their ability to do business, the ability of the employee to perform actions (smoke breaks limitling efficiency for example) is impacted by smoking, that they clearly communicated the rule change, that they offered assistance to employees to comply with the rule change on a reasonable timeline, that they established a paper trail of failure to comply by the employee with the new rules, etc. etc then it is quite likely that the employee would lose this suit.

 

It is the case in our society that:

 

1. Most employees will not want to spend the time to pursue a lawsuit they are likely to lose and thus receive no payback from.

2. Most lawyers will see no reason to take this suit on based on the hope they will get a remunerative settlement if they see it as a loser.

3. Most employers will know that if they have controlled their costs as much as possible by hiring a lawyer on staff if they are doing a lot of litigation and that they can outlast most employees in long litigation and even oulast most lawyers or deluge them with motuion after motion that they simply need to pay the fixed costs of hiring a staff attorney to oppose all frivoulous suits, and oppose some reasonable suits and the costs can be managed.

 

Even your far-fetched example strikes me as no rational reason not to take the action of dismissing employees if this dismissal helps the bottomline.

[bills_fan]

You can't compare smokers to a 'protected class' because they are not now, nor will they ever be, a protected minority. A black person didn't CHOOSE to be black. But a smoker CHOSE to be a smoker. These are two totally different things. Likewise, a fat person...unless otherwise proven genetically...chose not to be thinner. So if you don't want fat people in your office, then you should not have to hire fat people.

 

I totally agree with you here. That is why I said lets not get into protected classes. My example was for fat people.

 

Consider this: a company has a new position to fill, and they post the position internally, and one of the requirements is that you must have a Masters Degree to apply for the job. Some people chose to get a Masters Degree. Can an employee with the company sue the company because they aren't eligible for the job simply because they don't have a Masters Degree?

 

It's a job requirement. You either fill it or you don't, and that is determined by the choices you make. If you don't fill the requirements, then how is that the fault of the company?

 

A master's degree may very well be a bona fide job qualification, whereas being fat or smoking certainly are not job qualificaqtions.

 

 

Personal accountability. Don't have any? Get some.

 

If this is directed at me, no reason to get nasty.

[IDBillzFan]

If this is directed at me, no reason to get nasty.

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Sorry...did not mean to direct that at you. I was just talking about people in general. I'm one of those dopes who believes that one of the single biggest problems in our country today is the lack of personal accountability.

[stuckincincy]

However, in this general case if the company can make a case that: its actions and smoking impact their ability to do business, the ability of the employee to perform actions (smoke breaks limitling efficiency for example) is impacted by smoking,

 

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Breaks are part of labor law for non-exempts or negoitiated contracts. On that break, you can choose to smoke or you can bark at the moon.

 

Slippery slope here. Never heard of someone killing, kidnapping etc because the perp smoked, but plenty of examples with alcohol and drugs.

 

And you can attain disabled status with alcohol and drugs - why not with smoking? Should not smokers be protected under the ADA Act? Counseled, and not be denied health coverage above non-smokers/alcoholics/drug users?

 

Do you single out abusers of cigarettes but accept and treat alkies and druggies - in all cases, these are either voluntary actions or the result of physical addiction.

 

Or do you think that the Orwellian model of "all pigs are equal, but some are more equal than others" should be the order of the day?

[KD in CA]

Currently, both the Senate and Congress are considering the elimination of all equal opportunity laws because companies should be allowed to do whatever the hell they feel like doing.

 

 

No, that would make far too much sense. We still need to cling to the outdated belief that business people would actually prefer to hire an inferior person and make LESS money so that they don't have to hire a black/white/yellow/green/male/female/gay/straight/jewish/christian/etc person.

[Spiderweb]

No, that would make far too much sense.  We still need to cling to the outdated belief that business people would actually prefer to hire an inferior person and make LESS money so that they don't have to hire a black/white/yellow/green/male/female/gay/straight/jewish/christian/etc person. 

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Affirmative actions? They suck as written. One should never be forced to accept inferior, less qualified candidates just for the sake of racial, ethnic, or other, equality. To be truely equal, protected classes can never be part of the equation. Yet, I won't hold my breath for that day to come.

 

But to deny discrimmination doesn't exist purely on racial, ethnic, etc., grounds is to be living in a fantasy world.

[KD in CA]

Affirmative actions? They suck as written. One should never be forced to accept inferior, less qualified candidates just for the sake of racial, ethnic, or other, equality. To be truely equal, protected classes can never be part of the equation. Yet, I won't hold my breath for that day to come.

 

But to deny discrimmination doesn't exist purely on racial, ethnic, etc., grounds is to be living in a fantasy world.

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Yup, so let's call out the thought police to enforce "fairness". Believing that people won't disciminate because the government tries to force them into certain actions is living in an even bigger fantasy world.

[Coach Tuesday]

Make the smoker go outside, fine. They have no right to impose their smoke on another person. Just as you my friend, have no right (business, government, or otherwise) to tell them they can't smoke or they'll be fired, stripped of their citizenship, or rights, etc, etc, etc.

 

Yes, I do smoke. At home, I go to the garage or outside for the sake of my family (not to mention the yellow sticky film it leaves on everything inside one's home).  I've quit a dozen times, yet ultimately have wandered back. I'll quit again. Maybe someday I'll make it, but that should be MY choice, not yours or my employer's, or the government's.

 

By your logic, next on the list will be Mickey D's and so on until society matches up with your self perceived best intentions. Clearly you enjoy freedoms today you simply do not deserve because you fail to understand what freedom is.

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Ahhh, the irony. You're obviously the one who fails to "understand what freedom is." It has nothing to do with companies. "Freedom" is a sphere of free choice where the government is not allowed to interfere with your actions. Businesses are not the government, OhBf. Get that thru your skull. They DO have the UNQUALIFIED RIGHT to tell you that you can't smoke or you'll be fired. Go back and take Social Studies and you'll figure this out. My so-called "best intentions" for society is that the Constitution should be enforced, meaning that government shouldn't interfere with the free choices of individuals or companies (which are considered individuals for most purposes under our laws).

[Coach Tuesday]

I have yet to see how this is legal. How the hell can you fire someone who is stupid enough to smoke? It doesn't make sense, unless someone signs a contract WHEN THEY ARE HIRED indicating that they won't smoke.

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Actually, if they have an employment contract at all (most likely they don't), it almost certainly allows the company to fire them "for cause" or at its "sole and absolute discretion." So, chances are, they're SOL.