Well, it's spreading slowly but surely. Now companies will follow Union Pacific in that companies will simply refuse to hire smokers. And still, no lawsuits. Mainly because the smokers don't have much ground to stand on.
Here's an article from a Houston paper:
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A Michigan company's decision to dismiss workers who smoke, even if it's on their own time, has privacy and workers' rights advocates alarmed and is raising concerns about whether pizza and six-packs are the next to go.
Weyco, an Okemos-based medical benefits administrator, said its offer of smoking cessation classes and support groups helped 18 to 20 of the company's smokers quit over the past 15 months.
But four others who couldn't or wouldn't no longer had jobs on Jan. 1.
"We had told them they had a choice," said Weyco Chief Financial Officer Gary Climes. "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 own 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 health care 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."
Some companies, while not going as far as Weyco, are trying to lower their health care costs by refusing to hire smokers.
Omaha, Neb.-based Union Pacific Corp. began rejecting smokers' applications in Texas, Idaho, Tennessee, Arkansas, Washington state, Arizona and parts of Kansas and Nebraska last year, and it 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 now smoke, and Bromley said it's clear they cost the company more money.
"It's no secret that people who smoke have more health issues than nonsmokers," he said, but safety records show that people who smoke also have higher accident rates.
On Jan. 1, Kalamazoo Valley Community College stopped hiring smokers for full-time positions at both its campuses.
Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia protect workers who smoke, saying they can't be discriminated against for that reason. Texas isn't one of those states.
Michigan doesn't have such a law, but state Sen. Virg Bernero has taken up the cause of the former Weyco workers. He 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 don't impinge on their work.
Weyco President Howard Weyers thinks Bernero is on the wrong side, noting that Weyco 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.
Chris Boyd said she considered the no-smoking policy drastic when it was first announced. 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, Mich. She said she probably wouldn't have been able to quit if not for the new policy.
