Whose Life Is It Anyway?

(CBS)  This story originally aired on Oct. 30, 2005.


Whose life is it anyway? That's what an increasing number of American workers are asking. Their bosses are replying: Whose business is this anyway?

Correspondent Morley Safer reports the issue is the way we live our lives.

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More and more that cigarette, or drink at home, that political candidate you supported, even your eating habits, are coming under the scrutiny of your boss.

If he doesn't approve, it might even cost you your job. As 60 Minutes first reported last fall, this is what happened to two Michigan women, Anita Epolito and Cara Stiffler.

Anita and Cara were considered model employees at Weyco, an insurance consulting firm outside of Lansing, Mich., both having worked at the company for years. The women sat side-by-side, sharing workloads – and after work – sharing the occasional cigarette.

But at a company benefits meeting two years ago, the company president announced, "As of January 1st, 2005, anyone that has nicotine in their body will be fired," Anita remembers. "And we sat there in awe. And I spoke out at that time. 'You can't do that to us.' And then he said, 'Yes, I can.' I said, 'That's not legal.' And he came back with, 'Yes, it is.'"

And it was legal: in Michigan, there's no law that prevents a boss from firing people virtually at will. At Weyco, that meant no smoking at work, no smoking at home, no smoking period.

Weyco gave employees 15 months to quit, before subjecting them to random nicotine testing. If you fail, you're out.

Kara says she did try to kick the habit. "I tried to quit smoking. I took advantage of their program, the smoking cessation program. But I was unsuccessful."

Anita also says she has been trying to stop smoking. "I'm trying every way to cut down, quit. Gum. I'm trying. Yes. On my own. But I don't need an employer to do that."

"I pay the bills around here. So, I'm going to set the expectations," says Howard Weyers, the boss and some would say tyrant of Weyco. "What's important? This job? And this is a very nice place to work. Or the use of tobacco? Make a decision."

Anita says she asked Weyers whether her 14 years of loyal service meant anything. She says he said "Sorry, Epolito, No."

"You didn't feel any sympathy at all for them?" Safer asked Weyers. "No, because I gave them plenty of time to make a decision. A number of their co-workers quit the habit," he replied.

In the end, 20 employees quit smoking and four who wouldn't were fired when they refused to take a breathalyzer test. A year later, Anita and Cara are still unemployed, still smoking and fuming.

"I am not the poster child for nicotine here. I think that smoking is a great smoke screen around the true issue here," says Anita. "This is about privacy. This is about what you do on your own time, that is legal, that does not conflict with your job performance."

What it is really about is money. "Big Business" is increasingly nosing into your business, trying to cut the costs of their business. And the easiest targets are smokers.

Really obese people, whose healthcare is among the costliest, are protected by federal law. But thousands of companies and countless municipal governments and police departments refuse to hire smokers, and some require affidavits, and even use lie detector tests to enforce the policy.

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[bzar1]

Couldn't agree more. The "right" kind of Big Government would ideally protect workers from such treatment.

[MichaelJMcFadden]

Note the cute trick played in the U of Louisville's antismoking policy: "If employees shape up, slim down, and fill out a questionnaire, a kind of confessional of your health, eating and sexual habits, they get a $20 monthly credit on their health insurance premiums"

What they're REALLY doing of course is charging the "bad folks" an extra $20/month, but since that would inspire howls of protest they phrase it as giving a "credit" to the "good folks."

And Lewis Maltby says, ""Smoking has become more than a health issue. Smoking has become a moral issue. Somehow people look at smokers and say, 'You're a bad person because you smoke.' I don't know quite how that happened. But it has."

Mr. Maltby, it happened when the antismoking industry was given 800 MILLION dollars a year from the MSA to change American attitudes through biased studies, twisted press releases, and millions upon millions of dollars of multiply repeated TV ads to reach into our minds. See Lie #2 at TheTruthIsALie.com for a better idea of what I'm talking about here.

We've accepted social engineering into the fabric of America and it will be a very difficult disease to stamp out.

Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"