Big Brother is now hiring.

[fredjacksonsan]

Sorry 'bout that; but still from one of the articles, you're increasing your chance of lung cancer to 20 times the "normal" level......not good odds either I'd think.

[DVS LT1]

Originally Posted by Heep

in Canada at least, you can't fire or refuse to hire someone based on their personal life and decisions - you must hire whoever is best suited to the position.

That’s not entirely correct. First of all, we see "legal" discrimination occurring quite often in sectors and industries where the government has initiated and targeted firms for affirmative action. The gov't has said that the four designated groups - women, visible minorities (whoever that is these days?? lol), persons with disabilities, and aboriginal people – are under represented in your company/sector and you must start hiring only people from all or one of those groups, until we’re satisfied.

Then we have what’s called a bona-fide occupational requirement – often an industry specific requirement that employers argue in court as being essential for the proper completion of a job (as opposed to successful completion of a job). It is a very grey area of legislation.

In some industries such as the fire department, the brass often claim that in order to provide the best protection candidates must be able to lift this much, run this far, basically pass a certain test. How or why white males make up 90% of the firefighters is totally beyond me, but by claiming (and upholding in court) “bona-fide” occupational requirements the Fire dept. can’t be touched when the gov’t comes around and says, “wait a minute, you’ve hired only 3 women and 6 visible minorities – in the last twenty years!!!”

Then you’ve got companies operating in sectors such as this story – the medical and health care sectors – where even though smokers can fulfill the job description as good as any non-smokers can, the company may believe that being a smoker is in fact a conflict of interest against the corporate mission statement, industry goals, (the very nature of the work etc…), and thus, require candidates and employees be smoke-free as a bona-fide occupational requirement. The company really has to prove that going against the bona-fide requirement would be detrimental to the organization – if the company produced quit smoking aids or stuff like smoking related cancer surgery tools, then it’s a fair bet to think a non-smoking requirement would hold up as a bona-fide occupational requirement. But in this case, where the company has said they just don’t want to pay higher healthcare costs, that has nothing to do with being a bona-fide requirement anyways and thus would be considered illegal.

Fact of the matter is discrimination based on lifestyle and attitudes occurs everywhere, everyday. It becomes illegal if you’re stupid enough to tell a candidate or employee they’re being fired or not selected because they smoke or don't look nice. First thing you learn in human resources training is to always tell the candidate they didn't get the job because a more qualified candidate was found - that way the applicant has nowhere to go, no if ands or buts.

Although this company could never get non-smoking passed as a bona-fide requirement, they have every right to be concerned with the cost of healthcare for their smoker employees. They've just approached it the wrong way. They should have directly addressed the issue of compensation and benefits with the employees - if you smoke, you get no dental and/or certain other benefits (related to smoking related illnesses). We'll give you more PAY in exchange, but nothing else. No benefits.

Nothing illegal with that, company gets what it wants, employees can smoke all they want...