Rokersdiscriminatie op de werkvloer
Steeds meer rokers kunnen de kans om aan de slag te gaan bij Amerikaanse bedrijven wel op hun buik schrijven. Veel bedrijven hanteren een actief beleid om rokers te weren, onder het mom dat ze te duur zijn in de verzekering.
Toch bleek uit een onderzoek dat in 1999 onder 46.000 werknemers door de Health Enhancement Research Organization werd gehouden dat rokers niet eens het duurste zijn om te verzekeren. Werknemers die onder stress lijden, zwaarlijvigheid of depressie hebben hogere gezondheidskosten dan rokers volgens dit onderzoek. En welk percentage van de werknemers in een doorsnee Amerikaans bedrijf heeft geen last van stress?!
Kortom, pure discriminatie als gevolg van de anti-roken hype. Als we zo doorgaan hebben we straks roker- en nietrokers-bedrijven, rokers- en nietrokerscafés, rokers- en nietrokerstreinen en….. apartheid!
The help-wanted ad said “non-smoker.” This was a problem for Patty Hensley, who had been addicted to nicotine since the age of 14.
But she needed a job, so she pulled a ploy familiar to thousands of smokers caught between a vicious habit and a growing workplace stigma: She smoked out the car window on the way to the job interview.
“I thought that was a way to hide it,” says Hensley, 49.
Hensley, who quit for good (knock wood) last November, didn’t get that job. Like many smokers, she was at a disadvantage when it came to competing for work. Rising health-insurance costs, worries about declining productivity and general disdain for the habit have turned some smoke-free workplaces into smoker-free workplaces — businesses that refuse to hire smokers at all, even if they never fire up a cigarette during work hours.
“We know that demographically approximately 25 percent of the adult population smokes, and that 25 percent tends to have less desirable characteristics in terms of employment,” says Dieter Benz, a principal with Investors Property Management in Seattle. “Some of our people are out in the field every day and they present an image to the public. [Smoking] is not the image that we want.”
Although Benz’s company relies on the honor system to ferret out job candidates who smoke, others take stricter measures.
In states that allow it, such as Washington, Alaska Airlines requires potential hires to take a nicotine test before granting them a job.
[…]
The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department makes applicants sign an “affidavit of non-tobacco use” and to promise to “educate” citizens caught smoking within 50 feet of the building.
Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories in Pullman warns on its Web site that it may fire anyone who starts smoking after being hired.
Benz, a former smoker himself, is unapologetic about his smoker-free workplace policy, as well as the rule against allowing tenants to smoke in the buildings his company manages.
“If we’re going to piss off anyone, do we want to piss off the 75 percent [who don’t smoke] or do we want to do it to the 25 percent?”
Bron: Seattle Times, Companies increasingly saying smokers need not apply
