You have no legal rights

by **eric144** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 6:36 pm

It always amazes me that Americans are so proud of their, freedom, democracy and constitutionsl rights. The problem is that they work harder and for longer hours than Europeans. Basically when they enter their workplace (the majority of waking hours), they are under a tyrranical regime a Soviet leader could only have dreamed of. Here is an example. You can argue the merits of this particular case, but it's the 'You have no rights' part that disturbs me. <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/28/60minutes/main990617.shtml">www.cbsnews.com/stories/2...0617.shtml</a> 60 Minutes Story 10-30-05: Synopsis: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- Whose Life Is It Anyway? Oct. 30, 2005 CBS) Whose life is it anyway? That’s what an increasing number of American workers are asking. Their bosses are replying: Whose business is this anyway? Correspondent Morley Safer reports the issue is the way we live our lives. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- More and more that cigarette, or drink at home, that political candidate you supported, even your eating habits, are coming under the scrutiny of your boss. If he doesn’t approve, it might even cost you your job, which is what happened to two Michigan women, Anita Epolito and Cara Stiffler. Anita and Cara were considered model employees at Weyco, an insurance consulting firm outside of Lansing, Mich., both having worked at the company for years. The women sat side-by-side, sharing workloads – and after work – sharing the occasional cigarette. But at a company benefits meeting two years ago, the company president announced, "As of January 1st, 2005, anyone that has nicotine in their body will be fired,” Anita remembers. “And we sat there in awe. And I spoke out at that time. ‘You can't do that to us’ And then he said, ‘Yes, I can.’ I said, ‘That's not legal.’ And he came back with, ‘Yes, it is.’” And it was legal: in Michigan, there’s no law that prevents a boss from firing people virtually at will. At Weyco, that meant no smoking at work, no smoking at home, no smoking period. Weyco gave employees 15 months to quit, before subjecting them to random nicotine testing. If you fail, you’re out. Kara says she did try to kick the habit. “I tried to quit smoking. I took advantage of their program, the smoking cessation program. But I was unsuccessful.” Anita also says she has been trying to stop smoking. “I'm trying every way to cut down, quit. Gum. I'm trying. Yes. On my own. But I don't need an employer to do that.” “I pay the bills around here. So, I'm going to set the expectations,” says Howard Weyers, the boss and some would say tyrant of Weyco. “What's important? This job? And this is a very nice place to work. Or the use of tobacco? Make a decision." Anita says she asked Weyers whether her 14 years of loyal service meant anything. She says he said “Sorry, Epolito, No.” “You didn't feel any sympathy at all for them?” Safer asked Weyers. “No, because I gave them plenty of time to make a decision. A number of their co-workers quit the habit,” he replied. In the end, 20 employees quit smoking and four who wouldn’t were fired when they refused to take a breathalyzer test. A year later, Anita and Cara are still unemployed, still smoking and fuming. “I am not the poster child for nicotine here. I think that smoking is a great smoke screen around the true issue here,” says Anita. “This is about privacy. This is about what you do on your own time, that is legal, that does not conflict with your job performance.” What it is really about is money. ‘Big Business’ is increasingly nosing into your business, trying to cut the costs of their business. And the easiest targets are smokers. Really obese people, whose healthcare is among the costliest, are protected by federal law. But thousands of companies and countless municipal governments and police departments refuse to hire smokers, and some require affidavits, and even use lie detector tests to enforce the policy Bosses like Weyers will not pay for other people’s bad habits. Says Weyers, “The biggest frustration in the workplace is the cost of healthcare. Medical plans weren't established to pay for unhealthy lifestyles.” Weyers admits he never really measured how much the smokers he once employed cost him and acknowledged it may not have cost him anything. “But, I don't know what's going to happen five years from now with that person that's smoking. That's what I don't want to wait for,” says Weyers. Weyers wouldn’t back down, even when he learned that Anita wasn’t on his health plan. Weyers, a former college football coach, works out five times a week and wants his employees to share his values. At Weyco, Howard rules. “I set the policy and I’m not going to bend from the policy,” says Weyers. “But, it strikes me as a kind of intolerant attitude to the habits, foibles, eccentricities of other people,” said Safer. “Right. I would say I'm intolerable,” Weyers replied. “Intolerable and intolerant,” Safer responded. “I am. But I just can’t be flexible on the policy,” says Weyers. But Lewis Maltby, head of the National Workrights Institute in Princeton, N.J., calls Weyco’s smoking ban a form of “lifestyle discrimination.” Maltby says it is perfectly legal in 20 states and in most of America a worker has virtually no rights at all. “Under the law in all but five states in America, your boss can fire you for any reason under the sun. Including who you associate with after work. Whether you're smoking or drinking in your own home. Or a bumper sticker on your car. And you have no legal recourse.” What about Weyers’ argument about increased healthcare costs? “The problem is lots of things increase your healthcare costs. Smoking. Drinking. Eating junk food. Not getting enough sleep. Dangerous hobbies. Skiing, scuba diving. If you allow employers to regulate private behavior because it's going to affect the company's healthcare costs, we can all kiss our private lives goodbye,” says Maltby. Maltby says Weyco is an extreme case, but examples of companies nosing into their employees’ lives abound. At the Borgata Casino, bartenders and waitresses – they call them “Borgata Babes” – can be fired if they gain more than seven percent of their bodyweight. Or penalizing workers by imposing higher health insurance premiums for activities the boss deems undesirable. And Maltby says sometimes it’s not even health related. “There was a gentleman last fall in West Virginia who was fired because he asked an embarrassing question of a candidate at a political rally. There was a woman in Alabama who was fired for having a ‘Kerry For President’ bumper sticker on her car. They all called their lawyers. They all called the ACLU. All got the same answer. ‘You have no legal rights.’” And then there is Ross Hopkins, who worked for an Anheuser-Busch/Budweiser beer distributor in Colorado. “I went out on a date with my girlfriend. And we went to a country bar. And the waitress had delivered a Coors by mistake. And, you know, I just told her, ‘Well, you know, I'll take it,’” recalls Hopkins. But he then ran into the boss’s son-in-law, who offered to buy him a Bud. Hopkins says he politely declined and the next day at work “they'd pulled me in and told me that they were letting me go for drinking that Coors, you know, and they told me to leave.” Hopkins says he was “very surprised” by the firing and sued the distributor for wrongful termination. Both parties refuse to discuss the final resolution. Most companies don’t care what beer you drink – it’s how much you drink or smoke or eat. James Ramsey, the president of the University of Louisville, says the cost of bad behavior by university staff was getting out of hand. “The Band-Aids weren't working. The quick fixes weren't working. We can do mail order form pharmacy. We can do all those kinds of things to control cost. But our costs are going up.” So the university is trying another tactic. They instituted a so-called “wellness program.” If employees shape up, slim down, and fill out a questionnaire, a kind of confessional of your health, eating and sexual habits, they get a $20 monthly credit on their health insurance premiums. Ramsey signed up himself and says he saw a dramatic improvement in his own health. “I've lost 30 pounds. And I don't have to take blood pressure medicine.” And says he has never felt better and is working out five times a week. Part of the university’s program are coaches who essentially nag participants about their weight, eating and other lifestyle habits. “Isn't that going a little far in terms of the private lives of the people working for you?” Safer asked. “If I volunteer for a program, then I'm volunteering to be nagged and to be pushed. And it works,” says Ramsey. He says it is too soon to know if the wellness program is controlling costs. But Mark Rothstein, a bio-ethics professor at Louisville, did not sign up. Rothstein says wellness programs may lead to better health, but questions whether people can trust in the confidentiality of the questionnaire they filled out. “People who work for employers who perhaps don't have the best record of keeping privacy might well be concerned that the information could filter back to the company. And they could be adversely treated.” “Not get that promotion,” says Safer. “Exactly. There's a tremendous incentive for employers to try to weed out high -ost healthcare users. Five percent of employees represent 50 percent of healthcare costs. And if you're an employer and can identify who these people are, you can save a lot of money to your bottom line,” says Rothstein. Which is what this is all about. Countless companies like Quaker Oats, Johnson and Johnson, Honeywell, Motorola and IBM claim to have saved millions after instituting wellness programs. But all that good health might not necessarily make for the best workforce. The city of North Miami, Fla., used to require that all its new police officers be non-smokers. But two years ago, the city quietly dropped the smoking ban. “We realized that at best, we may save five percent on our insurance premium. But now we are having a problem with trying to recruit and hire highly qualified candidates. And we’re competing against agencies that did not have that policy,” says Chief of Police Gwendolyn Boyd. Boyd says dropping the ban helped her recruiting efforts. Officer Juan Mayato believes that the city ultimately learned that those smokers, more often than not, make pretty good cops. “I mean, what does smoking have to do with the way you perform your job out here. There's a lot of people that smoke that are well qualified for this job and it doesn't affect them. And, you know, they couldn't hire them.” That was the problem CNN faced, and after 13 years of a ban on hiring smokers, it rescinded the policy. Even so, Lewis Maltby says it’s going to be near impossible to marshal support for smokers. “Smoking has become more than a health issue. Smoking has become a moral issue. Somehow people look at smokers and say, ‘You're a bad person because you smoke.’ I don't know quite how that happened. But it has.” But Howard Weyers would even like to extend his smoking ban to spouses of his employees. “It's a little like, you know, the old communist Eastern Europe. Big Brother is watching you all the time,” said Safer. “Well, maybe Big Brother should be watching because we have to eliminate that problem,” Weyers replied. “Even if it means snooping into their private lives?” Safer asked. “I don’t snoop into their private lives. When they leave here, I don't follow them,” Weyers said. “Well, you do after a fashion,” Safer said. “Well, a policy does,” Weyers answered. “And you are the policy,” Safer said. Weyers agreed. “Yeah, that's right. I'm the policy maker. Yes, sir.” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On October 19, 2005 a lawsuit against Howard Weyers and Weyco, Inc. was filed in Michigan by a former employee, Christine Ramon. Ms. Ramon was employed at Weyco as a Reporting Analyst from April 2002, until her resignation in December of 2003. She alleges in the suit that Mr. Weyers sexually harassed her over the course of her employment at Weyco and is seeking $100,000 in damages. In a statement to 60 Minutes from Mr. Weyers' lawyer, Weyers denies the allegations and says he has instructed his lawyers to defend the claims vigorously. The statement goes on to say that the suit is a dispute between private parties and has nothing to do with Mr Weyers’ policy on smoking. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=eric144>eric144</A> at: 10/31/05 5:56 pm

by **Watchful Citizen** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 8:53 pm

60 Minutes nearly imploded over whether to carry the story of a tobacco company insider who smuggled out documents the company wanted to hide showing they knew it killed, that they jacked up addiction chemically, and that they marketed to kids.. CBS was threatened with a massive lawsuit and backed down only to carry the story after someone else braver did. So portraying a lethal addictive drug's use as a civil liberty has been the psy-op tactic shared by tobacco companies and others who don't want to be regulated in the interest of public safety. Tobacco is an atrocity in absolute terms to the user and it does affect non-users, too. Besides gagging on it in public every day, I once had an office boss who spent 20 minutes of every hour in the designated smoke room medicating herself. Lots of lost productivity in illnesses, too. Imagine a junkie jones-ing for a cig while negotiating that contract. Ever been on a long smokeless plane flight? That will make you think twice about the effect of smoking on the victim's mind. Addiction is ugly., Selling addiction as self-expression still works with the young and insecure which are many.

by **eric144** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 9:08 pm

"This is disinfo. Tobacco as civil rights is psy-ops." I really don't think it is, the tobacco war is over, the peasants handed out massive damage claims to each other. Lighting up on an American plane would get you sliced into pieces and eaten by the well balanced and non addicted natives. Worse than hijacking the damned thing. "Lots of lost productivity " The ultimate American crime. "Imagine a junkie jones-ing for a cig while negotiating that contract. " Yes, losing a contract is worse than losing a leg, no question. A survey in Britain showed that sports injuries cost four times as much as tobacco related diseases. Imagine someone in traction turning up to negotiate a contract. What a bad wage slave that would be. I don't smoke and I don't own a tobacco company or plantation. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=eric144>eric144</A> at: 10/31/05 6:09 pm

by **Homeless Halo** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 9:22 pm

I find I must agree with eric, at least in some senses, on this subject (strange huh?). Americans have larger medical bills, "loss of productivity" (heaven forbid), and more deaths caused by eating habits than by smoking, including cancer deaths (40% are dietary). No one fires you because you're fat, so they get the smokers instead. Any of these sorts of practices should be illegal. People should not be discriminated against based on legal life choices. No one complains about the excitability and anxiety oozing from caffeiene addicts because most westerners are among them. Caffeiene can cause worse withdrawal symptoms than nicotine, but without additional health insurance cost. How much company time do you spend sipping coffee? They'll come for you next, then fat lizzy in the next cubicle.

by **eric144** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 9:43 pm

"They'll come for you next, then fat lizzy in the next cubicle" Yes, and congress has said she can sing but not sue which is outrageous. It's more than just lifestyle. When Total Quality Management was proposed at my work I suggested buying guns and manning the barricades. They didn't understand the difference between free range and battery chickens. I left. I saw a guy being pulled up by his boss today. If it had been me I would have ripped his head off. I am a very bad slave (unemployed !!!) . Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=eric144>eric144</A> at: 10/31/05 6:44 pm

by **anon** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 10:56 pm

Yep, would be a darn good bet that there's disinfo - tit for tat to pay back for the expose, just for starters. But the story also mentioned other privacy issues like voting ( well, bumper sticker & question at a rally) and so forth. If there were natl health care, or even health -as - not - capitalist - device, this health care issue wouldnt come up. But it's probably an excuse for at least some of those bosses, the ones who are power-mad bullies. In any case, as the story illustrated, it's not just health/tobacco

by **eric144** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 11:01 pm

The voting intimidation should be a criminal offence, in a democracy it would be.

by **Col Quisp** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 11:42 pm

Thankfully, I live in a state where smoking is recognized as a civil right. Employers cannot discriminate against smokers. Yee haw!

by **banned** » Tue Nov 01, 2005 1:36 am

Smoking affects the people around them. Even when they don't smoke in your presence they reek of it, the smoke follows wherever they go. They come back from a break and stink up the joint. I have no problem with anyone smoking, as long as not a molecule of THEIR smoke reaches MY nose. Because THEIR RIGHT to smoke ends where MY nasal cilia and mucosa begins. Let them wear helmets that keep ALL the smoke they generate recirculating into their own respiratory systems, and they can smoke anywhere they want. I have asthma and I don't want to smell it. *I* have a right not to have to struggle for breath to gratify someone's habit. If my pathetic addiction to drinking Co-Cola somehow scraped off someone else's stomach lining besides my own, it wouldn't just be my business. Generally I find smokers are very selfish people in all areas, not just smoking. They care a great deal about what THEY are entitled to and don't care fuck-all about any other living soul, including their own children whom they poison with the known toxins and carcinogens in the secondhand smoke, or even in their own wombs. As for legal rights in general, you have the legal rights (1) that the law--as in legislation plus case law--says you have at any given moment; (2) that you are willing to insist upon having; and (3) that if you are deprived of them you are ready, willing, able, and can afford to enforce via the courts and/or the court of public opinion. That's all, folks. As a battle scarred veteran of several forays into enforcing my legal rights, all of which I won or sort of won (sort of means, I didn't get my discriminatory boss fired but I got a fat severance package to go away), and being in the midst of one as we speak, you either need to be able to be your own attorney or to afford one, and to be able to afford the other costs, both financial and emotional. Not in ANY way to take away from Rosa Parks, a true heroine, but there was a lot that had to happen between her refusing to give up her seat for the bubba and the passage of civil rights legislation, and after that, the struggle to ensure its enforcement, which continues to this day.

by **OnoI812** » Tue Nov 01, 2005 3:08 am

Smoking affects the people around them. so does everyones' exhaust pipe while I'm sitting in a traffic jam. I used to live in Palo Alto and you couldn't even smoke outside near some cafe's...meanwhile everytime someone opened the door, a blast of car exhuast would billow in....people were happy to believe the buzz was just the coffee.... This whole smoking debate is just the slave incrementalism, accelerated in the 80's when Ronnie started putting the screws to the unions. They used Drug testing to thinly veil their vampirism, and gain access into your body. Smoking is the natural progression to gain further access and let the slaves know "They've been owned". Nowadays people don't even remember their hair belongs to them and only them, and that you owe no vampire a sample of your blood.

by **banned** » Tue Nov 01, 2005 3:26 am

Smokers have a million of 'em. Yes, auto exhaust is bad for you. However, you would have to stick your mouth onto the pipe to get the amount of POISON at one time that you get downwind of someone else's cigarette. I'm also a cancer survivor, and I DO NOT SMOKE and do not associate with smokers and I do not want someone else's carcinogen in MY LUNGS. Period. Keep it out of my lungs or I'll put the goddamned thing out IN YOUR EYE.

by **pugzleyca3** » Tue Nov 01, 2005 4:35 am

"Weyers admits he never really measured how much the smokers he once employed cost him and acknowledged it may not have cost him anything." If this is the case, then what's he on about? People are not allowed to smoke in restaurants or any other commercial businesses here in California. But it is their own business what they do out of the range of others who might be bothered by the smoke itself. And as far as getting down on someone who reeks of it, well, I have worked with people who didn't take a bath for days and they reeked worse than any cigarette smoker who just came off their break and no one got on their case about that. I had to endure that nonsense. Until I quit. I find that many non-smokers have a holier than thou attitude because they've never been addicted to it. I have smoked and I quit. But the addiction is worse than anything else I've ever tried as far as drugs are concerned. And I tried my share of them when I was a teeny bopper, but nothing ever got hold of me like cigarettes. Until someone has been addicted to nicotine, they can't know how terrible it is and how hard it is to quit. Most smokers that I know don't even want to smoke, but they can't stop because of the nature of the beast. Why some people can quit and others cannot, I have no answer to that. I don't think it's simply a matter of willpower, I think it's chemically related. And since the cigarettes are taxed to hell and yonder, I think there should be more being done in the way of helping the smokers quit, if that is truly what the big to do is all about. And as far as someone being dumb enough to start...most smokers I know became addicted before the dangers of smoking were known and when it was "cool" to do it. No danger was presented and no social stigma.

by **Watchful Citizen** » Tue Nov 01, 2005 6:05 am

Maybe some of the co-workers I've had make me cite that production problem that corporateers would seriously think about.. How about a two-pack a day smoker who spent all day smoking at the loading dock and not supervising the equivalent of a construction site? Now that was a safety problem for the rest of us because the guy literally didn't have time to do anything but feed his nicotine habit. Try walking the streets of any major city without lungfulls of carcinogens from smokers. (And diesal trucks. Yes, they should run on organic vegetable oil or something delicious.) But I agree that drug testing is unconstitutional and a Big Brother activity. So is defining who should be monetarily penalized for lifestyle choices. But smoking has real actuarial numbers to go on due to the years of heavy use to go on. So is taxing a deadly addictive toxin for big bucks. And marketing addiction as 'freedom' is the epitome of Orwellified abuse of the market at the expense of the health of millions.

by **robertdreed** » Tue Nov 01, 2005 8:04 am

Yes, you are. "Tobacco as civil rights is psy-ops." Did you read that linked story? You don't notice what you're opening the door to? Well, actually, that door was opened quite a while back, with private companies testing their employees for illegal drug use...and now, see where it's led. They follow you home to see if you're smoking a cigarette. "And marketing addiction as 'freedom' is the epitome of Orwellified abuse of the market at the expense of the health of millions." No one is "marketing addiction as freedom." The question of addiction begins with the personal decisions of the individual. Individuals have the right to risk addiction - by no means guaranteed- because no one else should have the power to constrain their personal behavior, unless and until they injure someone else. The comments about indoor smoking and on-the-job smoking are different matters. The case in question was two women who were using tobacco after their commitment to their employer had ended. At that point, it became a question of personal internal freedom. An employer's control over the behaviors of his employees shouldn't follow them off the work site. I'm saying this as a non-tobacco smoker who didn't allow smoking in my cab, and who was thankful for the anti-indoor smoking regs that were passed in California. I wince whenever I see a young girl lighting a cigarette (although for some reason, I don't have the same reaction about males.). I think the addiction is insidious. But it's one thing to have an unwieldy relationship with one's own desires, and an entirely different matter to be subjected to another person's coercion regarding matters of behavior that don't directly concern them. Two different questions. Every human being has to wrestle with the first problem- desire, cravings, and the personal nature of health risks. No free human being should have to be subjected to the second problem- an essential question of human liberty. If someone decides to have a hot fudge sundae, should they be required to flash a medical ID indicating whether or not they're diabetic, or to first stand on a scale to have their body-fat ratio checked in order to see if it's acceptable? Because once general assent to the principle of control is granted, that's where this is headed...there and beyond. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 11/2/05 12:46 am

by **michael meiring** » Tue Nov 01, 2005 8:37 am

Ono, QUOTE so does everyones' exhaust pipe while I'm sitting in a traffic jam. I used to live in Palo Alto and you couldn't even smoke outside near some cafe's...meanwhile everytime someone opened the door, a blast of car exhuast would billow in....people were happy to believe the buzz was just the coffee.... ------------------------------------------------------ i would like to invite all the anti smoking hysterical people to the test. get a smoker in a spaceman type suit, and get him to light a cigerette. get the anti smoker extremist in his car with a hosepipe from the exhaust going into his car, and see how long it takes for the first one to die. funny how all these anti smoking fanatics are deafeningly silence on the subject of passive car fume deaths/illnessess? I know many people who have had lung cancer who have never smoked, or frequented smoke filled places, go figure. do the anti smoking fanatics want to see everything banned that affects the health of other people from 'passive exhaust car fumes' to passive alcohol abuse? How many people are victims of alcohol related attacks crimes? isant that bad for their health? This whole smoking debate is so one sided, and people are stuck in a neanderthal type intelligence, 'lets' stick to targeting the smokers, its akin to the witchburning tactics from christian sects 500 years ago, I'd be suprised if these anti smoking extremists were not direct desendents of family actively involved in burning scores of people at the stake for being protestant or catholic, or of being a witch.

You have no legal rights

You have no legal rights

This is disinfo. Tobacco as civil rights is psy-ops.

Re: This is disinfo. Tobacco as civil rights is psy-ops.

odd

Re: odd

disinfo + not disinfo

Re: disinfo + not disinfo

Re: disinfo + not disinfo

Being Porky Pig only affects the fat person.

Re: Being Porky Pig only affects the fat person.

Yet another false analogy.

Re: Yet another false analogy.

I'm not a production enforcer or puritan.

Re: I'm not a production enforcer or puritan.

put it to the test

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