County: Smokers need not apply
By Zac Anderson
Published Tuesday, May 20, 2008 at 4:30 a.m.
Last updated Tuesday, May 20, 2008 at 3:37 a.m.
SARASOTA — Citing the burden they place on taxpayers who pay for government workers’ health insurance, Sarasota County officials announced Monday that they no longer will hire smokers.
BACKGROUND
In Florida, the right not to hire employees who smoke was upheld in 1995 by the state Supreme Court after a prospective employee sued North Miami. Sarasota County officials cited Centers for Disease Control research that put the annual cost of hiring a smoker at $3,400 a year in lost productivity and medical expenses. The policy makes Sarasota County the first county in Southwest Florida to make smoking a hiring issue. Charlotte and Manatee counties do not, though Manatee has policies designed to discourage employees from smoking. Sarasota County Administrator Jim Ley said the hiring ban came out of “a five- or six-year strategy to produce a healthier work force and manage our long-term health care costs.” The county currently pays about $31 million annually in health benefits for 3,600 employees, or $8,600 per worker. Ley said not hiring smokers should help limit the annual growth in health care costs, the most expensive perk offered to county employees.Patrick Reynolds, who runs Foundation for a Smoke Free America, said it is hard to gauge the popularity of such hiring policies. They are less prevalent than smoking bans in restaurants and public places and largely dependent on state labor laws, he said. “It’s really a question of what extent the state empowers companies to refuse to hire smokers,” said Reynolds, who only tracks statewide smoking policies. “We know these bans contribute to the overall goal of a smoke free America.” In Florida, government agencies that refuse to hire smokers range from the sheriff’s offices in Hernando, Hillsborough and Pasco Counties to the city of Atlantic Beach. Manatee County employees who are smokers must pay more for the best health care coverage and attend a class about smoking. The county is also exploring ways to get more people to quit, said Manatee County Administrator Ed Hunzeker. Charlotte officials have discussed a ban on hiring smokers but the county currently does not discriminate. “It comes up from time to time, but right now we don’t ask that question,” said Charlotte communications director Joyce Ross. According to a report by the National Workrights Institute, a survey conducted in 1988 by the Administrative Management Society found that about 6,000 businesses nationwide “discriminate against off-duty smokers” and “the number has almost certainly increased since then.” Sarasota County Commissioner Nora Patterson said she has some reservations about the tobacco-free employee rule, but decided it was beneficial on balance. “We could potentially lose some very valuable employees but all things being equal it’s probably a good thing,” she said. The move not to hire smokers is the latest in a string of anti-smoking rules initiated by Sarasota County. The county recently banned smoking on public beaches. Sarasota County Commissioner Jon Thaxton opposed the beach smoking ban as an assault on personal freedom but supports the hiring criteria.
“I want to give people their opportunity to do what otherwise are lawful activities but this is proactive, not retroactive,” he said. “Everyone will know this up front.” New hires will be asked to submit to a drug test that detects nicotine and sign a pledge promising they have not smoked in the last 12 months. Existing employees will not be affected, but they are encouraged to take advantage of free programs to help them quit. In Florida, the right not to hire employees who smoke was upheld by a 1995 ruling of the state Supreme Court. A job applicant sued the city of North Miami arguing that an anti-smoker policy violated her privacy. The city argued that each smoker cost taxpayers $4,611 (in 1981 dollars) annually because of medical bills. Some companies even extend the smoking prohibition to spouses of prospective employees. Ley said 15 percent of the county’s employees with severe illnesses account for 85 percent of the health care costs. County officials based their decision not to hire smokers in part on a Centers for Disease Control study that said employees who smoke cost their employer about $3,400 a year in lost productivity and medical expenses.
Staff researcher Cindy Allegretto contributed to this report.
Last modified: May 20, 2008 3:37am
Companies increasingly saying smokers need not apply
By Shirleen Holt
Seattle Times business reporter
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?”
Lifestyle discrimination?
Businesses have reason to worry about their employees’ health. Employer-sponsored health-insurance premiums have increased by double digits for the last four years, rising nearly 14 percent in 2003.
Family coverage now costs about $9,000 a year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and individual plans an average of $3,400.
Smokers cost employers an average of $753 per year more in medical costs than nonsmokers, and miss an average of two more workdays a year than nonsmoking colleagues, the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department’s literature states.
Activists groups contend, however, that employers are selectively targeting smokers while ignoring other health risks that cost them even more money.
In a 1999 study of more than 46,000 employees, the Health Enhancement Research Organization, a national coalition of hospitals and public-health organizations, found that medical costs for workers suffering from stress, obesity or depression were higher than for employees who smoked.
“Everything we do affects our health,” says Lewis Maltby, director the National Workrights Institute, a spinoff of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “What you eat, whether you drink, what your hobbies are, whether you practice safe sex. If employers are allowed to control off-duty behavior when it’s health-related, we will have no private lives left.”
Twenty-nine states apparently shared this concern, enacting lifestyle-discrimination laws that prohibit employers from refusing to hire workers for their private, legal behaviors. This includes smoking, drinking or overeating.
Washington has no lifestyle-discrimination law, which means that employers are free to set whatever smoking policy they choose. (Smokers, like obese workers, are not protected by civil-rights laws that cover religion, race, ethnicity, age, gender or disability.)
Just because it’s legal, however, doesn’t mean it’s wise, says Mike Reilly, a Seattle attorney who represents employers in discrimination cases.
“Even though the law might not be completely favorable right now, I can see theories that plaintiffs’ lawyers could argue.”
If smoking is common among members of a protected class, for example, lawyers could argue that an employer’s nonsmoker policy disproportionately discriminates against that class, a legal theory called “disparate impact.”
The ACLU has already raised the topic, citing demographic data that shows that blacks and young women smoke in disproportionately high numbers and thus could be unfairly targeted by anti-smoking policies.
“Ultimately the employer should be trying to hire the most competent person for the job,” Reilly says. “An absolute rule of not hiring someone because they’re a smoker is not recommended.”
Changing employees’ habits Employers are playing a role in workers’ personal habits, thanks to rising health-insurance costs and worries about productivity. This shows the percentage of companies taking action. Health education: 71% Smoke-free workplace: 57% Financial incentives/ disincentives: 40% (compared with 14% in 1993) Health-history questionnaires: 29% Source: Hewitt Associates
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?”
Lifestyle discrimination?
Businesses have reason to worry about their employees’ health. Employer-sponsored health-insurance premiums have increased by double digits for the last four years, rising nearly 14 percent in 2003.
Family coverage now costs about $9,000 a year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and individual plans an average of $3,400.
Smokers cost employers an average of $753 per year more in medical costs than nonsmokers, and miss an average of two more workdays a year than nonsmoking colleagues, the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department’s literature states.
Activists groups contend, however, that employers are selectively targeting smokers while ignoring other health risks that cost them even more money.
In a 1999 study of more than 46,000 employees, the Health Enhancement Research Organization, a national coalition of hospitals and public-health organizations, found that medical costs for workers suffering from stress, obesity or depression were higher than for employees who smoked.
“Everything we do affects our health,” says Lewis Maltby, director the National Workrights Institute, a spinoff of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “What you eat, whether you drink, what your hobbies are, whether you practice safe sex. If employers are allowed to control off-duty behavior when it’s health-related, we will have no private lives left.”
Twenty-nine states apparently shared this concern, enacting lifestyle-discrimination laws that prohibit employers from refusing to hire workers for their private, legal behaviors. This includes smoking, drinking or overeating.
Washington has no lifestyle-discrimination law, which means that employers are free to set whatever smoking policy they choose. (Smokers, like obese workers, are not protected by civil-rights laws that cover religion, race, ethnicity, age, gender or disability.)
Just because it’s legal, however, doesn’t mean it’s wise, says Mike Reilly, a Seattle attorney who represents employers in discrimination cases.
“Even though the law might not be completely favorable right now, I can see theories that plaintiffs’ lawyers could argue.”
If smoking is common among members of a protected class, for example, lawyers could argue that an employer’s nonsmoker policy disproportionately discriminates against that class, a legal theory called “disparate impact.”
The ACLU has already raised the topic, citing demographic data that shows that blacks and young women smoke in disproportionately high numbers and thus could be unfairly targeted by anti-smoking policies.
“Ultimately the employer should be trying to hire the most competent person for the job,” Reilly says. “An absolute rule of not hiring someone because they’re a smoker is not recommended.”
The candidate stunk
Although it’s still rare for companies to have written policies against hiring people who smoke, job recruiters say covert bias against smokers is getting stronger, particularly in a soft economy where the supply of skilled workers outpaces the demand.
Jeremy Langhans, a 28-year-old job recruiter in the tech industry and occasional smoker, recalls one promising recruit who lost a shot at a good job because of his habit. Langhans noticed that the guy’s paper résumé “was stinking up my office,” but he recommended him anyway because the candidate was charming, professional and he wouldn’t be working with the public.
“When we finally sent him out, the hiring manager said something like, ‘This is a smoke-free environment and we feel your consultant would not be able to adhere to our policies.’ “
The candidate never knew why he was rejected, Langhans says.
Among companies that still hire smokers, many use a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle methods to discourage them from smoking during work hours and encourage them to quit altogether.
Nearly 60 percent of businesses now have smoke-free workplaces, and just 19 percent have restricted-smoking policies, such as offering designated smoking areas, according to a 2003 national survey by the consulting firm Hewitt Associates.
Increasingly, companies are asking their smoking employees not to congregate outside the front door. Microsoft, for example, has a rule against smoking anywhere near the buildings.
Lowe’s, the home-improvement retailer, prohibits employees from smoking on company property entirely. Some smoke in their cars or — at the Seattle store on Aurora — they walk through the parking lot so they can smoke on a side street.
Back into the closet
Seattle wellness consultant Larry Chapman cautions employers from becoming too punitive when it comes to health matters.
He conducted controlled experiments in the late 1980s in which groups of soldiers at Carswell Air Force Base competed against each other to become the healthiest team.
The harsher the squadron commanders were in forcing the men to lose weight, lower their cholesterol and reduce their smoking, the more some soldiers resisted.
“They ended up putting on weight, eating lots of fatty foods and starting to smoke,” says Chapman. “That was their way of rebelling.”
While Chapman supports the pay-to-play concept — that companies ask smokers to pay more of their health insurance premiums than nonsmokers — he says the most effective programs offer more rewards than punishments.
“We’d rather see people not gang up on the smoker. The smokers in our country have had a lot of adverse social pressure,” he says. “I’d rather not add to that.”
Patty Hensley, the woman who smoked out of her car on the way to a job interview, agrees.
She remembers trying to quit at one job. She wore a nicotine patch to work, ripped it off so she could have two cigarettes with her morning coffee, then slapped it back on until the next break.
Hensley, who now runs a Nicotine Anonymous support group, says some smokers are responding to the pressure by taking their habit into the closet. Their bosses don’t know they smoke, she says. For that matter, neither do their friends and family.
“With the social stigma attached, there’s more shame than ever before.”
Shirleen Holt: 206-464-8316 or sholt@seattletimes.com
