At Mich. firm, smoking at home is a firing offense

OKEMOS, Mich. -- A Michigan company's decision to dismiss workers who smoke, even on their own time, has privacy and workers' rights advocates alarmed and is raising concerns about whether pizza boxes and six packs are the next to go.

Weyco Inc., an Okemos-based medical benefits administrator, said its offer of smoking cessation classes and support groups helped 18 to 20 of the company's nearly 200 workers quit smoking over the past 15 months.

But four others who couldn't, or wouldn't, no longer had jobs Jan. 1.

"We had told them they had a choice," Weyco chief financial officer Gary Climes said. "We're not saying you can't smoke in your home. We just say you can't smoke and work here."

Such policies basically say employers can tell workers how to live their lives even in the privacy of their homes, something they have no business doing, said Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute in Princeton, N.J., a part of the American Civil Liberties Union until 2000.

"If a company said, 'We're going to cut down on our healthcare costs by forbidding anyone from eating at McDonald's,' they could do it," he said. "There are a thousand things about people's private lives that employers don't like for a thousand different reasons."

Former Weyco receptionist Cara Stiffler of Williamston, one of those who found herself without a job Jan. 1, said Weyco's policy is intrusive. "I don't believe any employer should be able to come in and tell you what you can do in your home," she said.

Some companies, while not going as far as Weyco, are trying to lower healthcare costs by refusing to hire smokers.

Union Pacific Corp., headquartered in Omaha, began rejecting smokers' applications in Texas, Idaho, Tennessee, Arkansas, Washington state, Arizona, and parts of Kansas and Nebraska last year and hopes to add more states.

Public affairs director John Bromley said the company estimates it will save $922 annually for each position it fills with a nonsmoker over one who smokes. It hired 5,500 new workers last year and plans to hire 700 this year. About a quarter of the company's 48,000 employees smoke.

"Looking at our safety records, [we know that] people who smoke seem to have higher accident rates than nonsmokers," Bromley said. "It's no secret that people who smoke have more health issues than nonsmokers."

Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia protect workers who smoke, saying they cannot be discriminated against for that reason. Massachusetts is among the states that have no smoking rights law.

Michigan also has no such law, but state Senator Virg Bernero plans to introduce a bill banning Michigan employers from firing or refusing to hire workers for legal activities they enjoy on their own time that do not impinge on their work.

Weyco president Howard Weyers thinks Bernero is on the wrong side, especially since companies are wrestling with ever-higher healthcare costs.

"We're doing everything we can . . . to get our staff healthier," Weyers said, noting that his company reimburses workers for a portion of health club costs, pays them bonuses for meeting fitness goals, and offers fitness classes and a walking trail at its Okemos office.

"Employers need help in this area. And I just don't think employers' hands should be tied" on how to accomplish that, he said.

Chris Boyd, an 18-year Weyco employee, said she considered the no-smoking policy drastic when Weyers first announced it. But she signed up for a smoking cessation group a few months later.

"I wasn't about to put smoking ahead of my job," said Boyd, 37, of Haslett. She had tried once before to break her 10-year, half-pack-a-day habit and said she probably would have been unable to quit if not for the new policy.