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Hospital tells tobacco users: You can't work here

Chas

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Following quoted from W.C. Douglas M.D. Newsletter - - -

"Forget secondhand smoke -- smokers are officially second- class citizens.

If you're a smoker and looking for work, don't bother sending a resume to Chattanooga's Memorial Hospital -- you're not wanted there. The hospital says it won't hire smokers, no matter where they might smoke or how often (or how little) they do it.

Goodbye, freedom and privacy -- we hardly knew you.

Even nicotine gum chewers won't be eligible to work at the hospital under this cockamamie new policy.

The hospital says it will test prospective employees for nicotine along with illegal drugs...lumping smokers and crackheads together. Fail the test and you have to sit in timeout for six months before you're allowed to apply again.

Don't think it ends here. If they get away with this, it won't be long before other businesses quickly follow suit.

I know it's hard to see past the lies and half-truths that cloud the smoking debate. But forget tobacco and how you feel about it for a moment -- because this is an issue that goes well beyond cigars, cigarettes and nicotine gum.

It goes far beyond smokers' rights, too. This is about AMERICAN rights. It's about allowing employers to invade our private lives and tell us which perfectly legal activities we can and can't do in our free time and in our own homes.

Today, it's smoking...tomorrow, what will it be? Perhaps your choice of food -- after all, if they hide behind the health argument to kick smokers out of the workplace, aren't bad eaters next?

And you can bet your belly they won't just be testing for sticky buns. Perfectly healthy bacon-eating low-carb diets would be considered unhealthy by the typically ill-informed standards used by most hospitals.

Or maybe instead of food they'll go after what you drink -- so you can forget all about that beer at the end of the day if you want to keep your stinking job.

Eventually, it could be what you read...what movies you watch...and who you're friends with.

And you thought ObamaCare was all we had to worry about."
 
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Sadly, versions of this have already been upheld in the US Supreme Court. As long as the employer is up-front about it, they can make about any rule they want. This type of ruling is being seen as "in the best interests" of all involved as smokers drive up a company' s insurance premiums.
It, sucks, and I don't agree with it. Unfortunately, it is what we have to look forward to getting more of in the future.
 
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It's happening all over. I was almost denied an internship this past summer because of a local government's policy against hiring people who had smoked in the last 12 months. I was lucky and a high ranking official waived the policy for me because I was only going to be there 3 months. I have not seen one like the one mentioned by the OP where they would test for nicotine levels.
 
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Unfortunately we are not a protected class.....and like with any private business or club they can decide who they will hire as long as it does not break the law.....

My main issue with this rule is that the effect it has completely overshoots the desired goal. Patients may not want to be treated by staff who smell like smoke, cough like a smoker, etc, especially when they are getting medical advice from those same staff. The rule takes it to far and penalizing casual smokers, those trying to quit, etc.

Rules like this that are designed to cast a wide net without regard as to who gets caught by it are my main issue....
 
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it's LEGAL!!!! what is happening to this country?!?!
If you are interested here is the Florida case on the issue and an article that talks about smoking and getting or not getting hired.

http://www.law.fsu.edu/library/flsupct/82836/op-82836.pdf - case

http://lawiscool.com/tag/the-city-of-north-miami-v-kurtz/ - article

in the end what this means is that, in Florida at least, this is legal. There are parameters and a court could very well find that testing for nicotine content is above and beyond what an employer is allowed, but maybe not since drug tests are allowed.
 

Chas

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it's LEGAL!!!! what is happening to this country?!?!
Too long have we kept quiet to avoid confrontation - we let women instruct us not, "to talk politics" or "oh, I don't want to talk about it".

We've been tolerant of the 100 years of chipping away at the constitution here in the States or back wherever home is.

We've too long trusted our rights to others who have chosen to feather their own nest at our expense.

This is not just a U.S.A. prob, but a prob with free people everywhere.

May be too late to stand and be counted, but stand at last we must!
 

SkinsFanLarry

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Actually this is not new, I know a facility here in NC that has been that way since they opened the doors about 10 years ago.

You can't even have tobacco products in your car, parked in the parking lot.
 
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Actually this is not new, I know a facility here in NC that has been that way since they opened the doors about 10 years ago.

You can't even have tobacco products in your car, parked in the parking lot.
My local hospital had this policy start in 1998 - You just had to say you were a non smoker and they had a policy against hiring smokers.

The hospital I work at on the weekends has a strict no smoking policy, even in the parking lot in your own car. They have security, ahemmm, protective services patrol and if you get caught in your car they write you up. First time big warning, second time terminated.....

It was actually not a bad transition, but they provided smoking cessation products and counseling, etc. Many, many people quite, the rest live with it and find ways around it.

I do not like the no hiring thing, but I do not mind the no smoking....

I had a manager once make us spray hospital air freshner on us after we smoked...Did it to prove a point in the department and sent another employee into an asthma attack. Last time he ever asked us to do it.....
 
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I know I'm in the minority here, but I support this hospital. To be clear, I think this rule is stupid and totally disagree with it. But the hospital, being a private organization has the right to hire anyone they choose, using whatever criteria they choose. Personally, I think Equal Opportunity Employment has gone too far.
 

openendstraight

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I know I'm in the minority here, but I support this hospital. To be clear, I think this rule is stupid and totally disagree with it. But the hospital, being a private organization has the right to hire anyone they choose, using whatever criteria they choose. Personally, I think Equal Opportunity Employment has gone too far.
I could not agree more.
 
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