A Stitch in Haste

MartiniPundit is indignant over this story:

Four employees of a health care company have been fired for refusing to take a test to determine whether they smoke cigarettes.

Weyco Inc., a health benefits administrator based in Okemos, Mich., adopted a policy Jan. 1 that allows employees to be fired if they smoke, even if the smoking happens after business hours or at home.

Company founder Howard Weyers has said the anti-smoking rule was designed to shield the firm from high health care costs. "I don't want to pay for the results of smoking," he said.

The rule led one employee to quit before the policy was adopted. Four others were fired when they balked at the smoking test.

MartiniPundit's view:

The anti-smoking crusade is about people wanting to tell other people what to do. ...No employer has the right to dictate what an employee does on his or her own free time. Weyco thinks this is a victory. I'd call it a defeat for personal liberties.

My response:

I respectfully dissent. I think you’re confusing two issues. It’s one thing to object to the infringement of property rights through, e.g., a smoking ban in bars (i.e., if it’s my bar, then I should be free to set whatever smoking policy I want).

However, freedom of employment is at least as important. I have (or should have) the right to hire whomever I want, under whatever pre-conditions I choose. You, meanwhile, have the right to tell me to go to hell (and work for someone else). By the same token, if a potential (non-smoking) employee has no objection to being tested, then who are you to say he and I can’t freely enter into such an employment contract?

However, I'll grant you this — the story says this policy is new. That's troublesome. It would probably be best, philosophically and perhaps legally, to grandfather current employees.

You don't shore up one libertarian principle by ripping down another. This is not a government act, so cries of "defeat of personal liberties," while nice to see, are misplaced in this context.

By the way, MartiniPundit is a great blog that should definitely be on everyone's blogroll.

UPDATE #1: Hit & Run chimes in on my side.

UPDATE #2: The New York Times is, two weeks later, revisiting the issue. Crescat chimes in, as does Pejmanesque.

For Discussion #1: Here's a related story — does the same analysis apply? Why or why not?

For Discussion #2: For the blawgers — do those pesky first-year Contracts class concepts of estoppel, waiver and detrimental reliance protect the current workers? Why or why not?

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