This is a real toughie, and one of those "slippery slope" deals.
I feel for the woman in the article who wasn't on the comapny's ins.
but I can understand an employer's need to try and keep down costs
and co-worker's desire not to have to "pay" for her smoking. Smoking
causes so many health problems.
It's sort of like the people with kids, a few years back a co-worker had
to leave because her little boy was sick, in the middle of THE worst
deadline crunch you ever saw, involving massive amounts of time and
late nights and heartache for a bunch of other people. Because of her
decision to have a baby. There was an awful lot of understandable (to
me) grumbling over it and the issue never was resolved. And this at a
company that had articles written about it for innovation in on-site
day care, etc.
And then the union health insurance plan where I worked had huge
(Couple million dollar's worth) losses for the hospitalization of a
co-worker, resulting in raising everyone's contributions and co-pays,
etc. That co-worker had full-blown AIDS.
So, I dunno. I do think that a company should have "grandfathered
in" the employees already there who did smoke and couldn't quit.
Maybe make very clear to employees just coming in that there was
a "no smoking" policy. Still, what are these people gonna do? Set up
Web cams in everyone's home to make sure there's no smoking going
on? Test for blood nicotine levels? Too big brother for me.
