Job discrimination against smokers is allowed, says Brussels

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.

That's rich. Hitler was a Roman Catholic, A vegetarian, Anti Abortion. I guess anyone with these credentials is a potential genocidal maniac, at least according to your formula.

I was referring to the anti-smoking meme, vegetarianism meme, euthenasia and other assorted monstrosities that he advocated. And if Hitler was a true Roman Catholic then the moon is made out of green cheese.

PS ... one of the first things Hitler did was to legalize abortion as Chancellor of Germany. He encouraged Aryan births .... everyone else was suitable fodder for abortion mills, death camps etc ....

'in view of the large families of native population it could only suit us if girls and women there had as many abortions as possible' - Hitler

LOL, chewing or "dipping" as they call it down here, is quite common. There are quite a few of the men I work with that dip and I'll take smoking over dipping any day. They all look like they have a swollen jaw and heaven forbid that they smile. Every trash can in my department is full of brown tobacco spit. The really disgusting thing was the time I stuck my hand in the trash to retrieve a paper I had thrown away by accident and came up with a huge "chaw". That is not only spit but the whole wad of tobacco.

I guess I've ruined everybody's dinner now! :-)

I think employers ought to have total discretion over who they hire and fire, but I also think that employers do their business a great disservice when employment decisions are based on anything other than the quality of the work produced by an employee. If the smoking actually affects the workplace (for instance, if they make the whole place smell like smoke and annoy other workers) then canning them makes sense. If they are doing it at home and it has no effect whatsoever on the job, why get rid of an otherwise productive employee?

The same thing happens here in America with pot. I can understand not wanting to hire a stoner who is a perpetual pot haze, but an employee who smokes a joint or two on the weekends and comes in ready to work on Monday isn't necessarily any more of bad worker than a worker who gets drunk on Saturday nights. And yet if they test positive in the urine test, that's the end in a lot of jobs.

A lot of this nonsense stems from the government giving incentives for businesses to buy health insurance for their employees. If it's going to cost the business more to have fat smokers working for them, it's no wonder they don't want to hire fat smokers. If individuals bought their own health insurance it wouldn't be an issue.

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