Whose Life Is It Anyway?

Are Employers' Lifestyle Policies Discriminatory?

(CBS) 
Bosses like Weyers will not pay for other people's bad habits.

Says Weyers, "The biggest frustration in the workplace is the cost of healthcare. Medical plans weren't established to pay for unhealthy lifestyles."

Weyers admits he never really measured how much the smokers he once employed cost him and acknowledged it may not have cost him anything.

"But, I don't know what's going to happen five years from now with that person that's smoking. That's what I don't want to wait for," says Weyers.

Weyers wouldn't back down, even when he learned that Anita wasn't on his health plan.

Weyers, a former college football coach, works out five times a week and wants his employees to share his values. At Weyco, Howard rules. "I set the policy and I'm not going to bend from the policy," says Weyers.

"But, it strikes me as a kind of intolerant attitude to the habits, foibles, eccentricities of other people," said Safer. "Right. I would say I'm intolerable," Weyers replied.

"Intolerable and intolerant," Safer responded. "I am. But I just can't be flexible on the policy," says Weyers.

But Lewis Maltby, head of the National Workrights Institute in Princeton, N.J., calls Weyco's smoking ban a form of "lifestyle discrimination."

Maltby says it is perfectly legal in 20 states and in most of America a worker has virtually no rights at all. "Under the law in all but five states in America, your boss can fire you for any reason under the sun. Including who you associate with after work. Whether you're smoking or drinking in your own home. Or a bumper sticker on your car. And you have no legal recourse."

What about Weyers' argument about increased healthcare costs?

"The problem is lots of things increase your healthcare costs. Smoking. Drinking. Eating junk food. Not getting enough sleep. Dangerous hobbies. Skiing, scuba diving. If you allow employers to regulate private behavior because it's going to affect the company's healthcare costs, we can all kiss our private lives goodbye," says Maltby.

Maltby says Weyco is an extreme case, but examples of companies nosing into their employees' lives abound. At the Borgata Casino, bartenders and waitresses – they call them "Borgata Babes" – can be fired if they gain more than seven percent of their bodyweight. Or penalizing workers by imposing higher health insurance premiums for activities the boss deems undesirable.

And Maltby says sometimes it's not even health related. "There was a gentleman last fall in West Virginia who was fired because he asked an embarrassing question of a candidate at a political rally. There was a woman in Alabama who was fired for having a ‘Kerry For President’ bumper sticker on her car. They all called their lawyers. They all called the ACLU. All got the same answer. 'You have no legal rights.'"

And then there is Ross Hopkins, who worked for an Anheuser-Busch/Budweiser beer distributor in Colorado.

"I went out on a date with my girlfriend. And we went to a country bar. And the waitress had delivered a Coors by mistake. And, you know, I just told her, 'Well, you know, I'll take it,'" recalls Hopkins.

But he then ran into the boss's son-in-law, who offered to buy him a Bud. Hopkins says he politely declined and the next day at work "they'd pulled me in and told me that they were letting me go for drinking that Coors, you know, and they told me to leave."

Hopkins says he was "very surprised" by the firing and sued the distributor for wrongful termination. Both parties refuse to discuss the final resolution.

Most companies don't care what beer you drink – it's how much you drink or smoke or eat.