Banning Smokers

1156163

My City Council would like to develop a new policy that would prohibit the hiring of persons who smoke. I have read where some fire departments do this for obvious reasons. Is this something employers can get away with?

ACU Frank

Many states have started to list smokers as a protected class. In what state are you located?

sonny

A friend who is an HR director in another nearby small municipality is retiring and I noticed on his job posting it noted "smoke free one year".. We are in FL

davids

In my state employers cannot prohibit employees from engaging in legal activity off the job. So, we could not have a blanket policy against hiring smokers. However, we have a provision in the collective bargaining agreement with our firefighters union that employees will refrain from using tobacco.

I know some communities add a surcharge to health insurance premiums for smokers as a way to encourage employees to quit smoking.

cnghr

[quote=davids;723342]
I know some communities add a surcharge to health insurance premiums for smokers as a way to encourage employees to quit smoking.[/quote]

I just read an interesting article about that in today's news:
[URL]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45335553/ns/health-the_new_york_times/[/URL]