In a tough job market, applicants are trying to stock their resumes with all sorts of special skills. But there is one they may forget that is becoming increasingly important to Orange County companies,nonsmoker.
Businesses have been trying to cut health costs as figures from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation show that health insurance costs have gone up 87% nationally from 2000 to 2006, the most recent available data.
Some companies have even gone as far as charging employees who smoke more money for their health insurance or flat out refusing to hire someone who smokes.
But most companies are taking less drastic approaches such as offering voluntary stop-smoking programs, said Sheldon Blumling, a partner in the Irvine office of Fisher & Phillips LLP who practices employment law in the benefits arena.
“I don’t see a big movement toward not hiring smokers,” Blumling said. “I don’t see employers moving toward the far end of the extreme where they’re just out-and-out refusing to hire smokers.”
No Smoking Policies
In recent years, however, some companies have taken high-profile stands against hiring smokers, including Scotts Miracle-Gro Co., an Ohio-based fertilizer company, and Union Pacific Corp., a railroad operator out of Omaha, Neb. Both companies have faced lawsuits over their policies.
The healthcare industry also has seen its share of smoking bans. As an example, the Cleveland Clinic, a large hospital chain, stopped hiring smokers in 2007.
Orange-based St. Joseph Health System, which has three local hospitals and more than 10,000 employees in the county, does not have a policy against hiring smokers, said Kellie Todd Griffin, a spokeswoman for the Catholic hospital operator.
St. Joseph’s hospitals are smoke-free zones, and the system encourages its workers who smoke to participate in smoking cessation programs, Griffin said.
And Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach does not bar smokers from employment, said Debra Legan, a hospital spokeswoman. Hoag has more than 4,020 workers.
But Hoag doesn’t allow its workers to smoke on its property and will offer assistance if they want to quit, Legan said.
More than 30 states,California isn’t one of them,have passed laws protecting employees who smoke on their own time from being barred from employment.
Lawyer Blumling doesn’t know of one that is pending in California, but said it would be more likely that a court would determine that smokers are a protected class from an employment law standpoint.
And some companies have notably backed off smoking bans, including Chicago-based Tribune Co., which owns the Los Angeles Times.
In January, Tribune started charging employees who smoke an additional $100 per month in healthcare premiums and also assessed that fee on those employees whose dependents used tobacco.
But Tribune did an about-face in April and decided to drop the smoking penalty, noting that the tobacco premium surcharge was inconsistent with its new corporate culture. Financier Sam Zell became Tribune’s chief executive when the publishing company was taken private in 2007.
Tribune also eventually returned money to 600 of its 16,000 workers.
Other employers that have dropped smoking bans have cited a lack of significant health premium savings as well as concerns about being able to attract workers as reasons.
Besides that, Blumling, who represents employers, noted that California is a state where “employment litigation is sport” and that businesses do not want to possibly create more avenues for workers to file claims against them.
Cessation Programs
In terms of voluntary approaches to controlling workplace smoking, a fairly popular one has been smoking cessation programs, either as part of a healthcare plan or available completely outside group health plans, according to Blumling.
“Employers are willing to put up money to help people quit smoking just for the sake of improving the experience under their health plan,” he said.
Employers also get the added benefit of more productive employees who aren’t taking regular smoking breaks.
For example, PacifiCare Health Systems, a Cypress-based subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group Inc., offers some smoking cessation benefits as part of wellness initiatives. A spokesman emphasized that the benefit is offered to employees upon employment.
“Carriers tend to stay away from anything that even comes close to hiring decisions,” Blumling said.
Although the wellness movement has become popular, it does have detractors.
Some civil libertarians and policy groups have said they are not convinced that such programs are effective.
No-smoking policies and wellness initiatives put enormous pressure on the privacy and personal lives of workers, Jeremy Gruber, executive director of the National Workrights Institute, told Hospitals & Health Networks magazine earlier this year.
“They’re not incentives at all. They are in essence, penalties,” Gruber told the magazine.
