Posted on 08/07/2006 1:02:04 AM PDT by Marius3188
A European company has the right to refuse employment to smokers, European Commissioner for employment and equal opportunities of Employers Vladimir Spidla has confirmed.
Scottish Labour MEP Catherine Stihler brought the issue to the commission after Irish call-centre company Dotcom Directories had advertised for a worker but said smokers needed not apply.
"If people are smoking on a coffee break or in their own time they come back into the office and they stink. We have a small office here and it would make things unbearable for the other staff", said Philip Tobin, director of Dotcom Directories in a radio interview.
EU legislation prohibits discrimination on the grounds of racial or ethnic origin, disability, age, sexual orientation and religion and belief in employment and other fields.
"A job advertisement saying that 'smokers need not apply' would not seem to fall under any of the ... prohibited grounds," the commissioner stated in a written reply to the MEP, quoted by the Financial Times.
"We all know employers discriminate on all sorts of grounds, from being too fat to the wrong colour hair. But for it to be so overt is depressing and shows that smokers are fair game," said Simon Clark, director of the British pro-smoking pressure group Forest to the paper.
In December last year the World Health Organisation became the largest international employer to ban the hiring of smokers in an effort to promote its public health campaign against tobacco use.
I don't like smelly people either, but people who smoke on their breaks aren't so offensive as to merit legal discrimination against them.
Personally, their smell offends me less than their frequent smoke breaks.
Smokers where I work spend more time outside than they do on their jobs. I don't mind the smoking as much as I do chewing. The man I work with chews and spits tobacco juice/spit in all the trash cans all day. Nasty! They aren't allowed to smoke inside the facility so the ones that don't want to spend all day on the porch, chew.
Will Brussels next require you to eat your Brussels sprouts?
Smoking is a personal choice, refusing to hire a smoker is also a personal choice.
Smoking is a personal choice, refusing to hire a smoker is also a personal choice.
And the EU is full of silly gooses: It's perfectly lawful to discriminate against any white male! No need to put "smoke screens" in front of our eyes!
Hmmmm...Let's see, using that rationale,
"Homosexual conduct is a personal choice, refusing to hire a homosexual is also a personal choice"....
I like the idea, but don't think the argument would hold up very well in today's PC-zealot trendiness...
"If people are smoking on a coffee break or in their own time they come back into the office and they stink"
and if they had a coffe on top, it becomes a WMD!
So is deviant/gay sex, but for some reason you can't discriminate against potential employees who engage in high risk behavior, even though they could easily milk your health plan with the cost of thier behavior. Personnally, my observation is smokers are more focused on the job. The perceived cost to the employee is minimal when compared to aids. One other note, they aren't the ones who normally catch and spread the colds/flu that visits an office every year. I would assume that an employer who mandates no-smoking in hiring is performing a urine or blood test to know. If he knows you smoke, he also knows many other things about you.
Just the opposite here. It's the non-smokers who spend twice the time in the break room (then try to figure out why they can't lose weight, ha!) The problem is.... smokers are more obvious when they take breaks because they have to leave their work areas.
I know....I thought about it, more than once, about taking up smoking just to be able to stand outside for 10 minutes every half hour.
Um...excuse me. Are you saying people who don't smoke are overweight?
I read your post and I thought you have to be working in a hillbilly hell.
Tobacco smoking is dying out.
If your company allows that, it's the companies fault. "10 minutes every halfhour"? I would say that is BS.
Further more, where I work, EVERYONE is entitled to two 15 minute breaks during the day.
I think you're trying to blow smoke up my.....something.
FMCDH(BITS)
Guess smokers are Europe's new Jews. Funny how most of Hitlers' desires were carried in spite of the fact that he lost the war.
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