DISCRIMINATING AGAINST POTENTIAL EMPLOYEES

A story in the New York Times last week told about companies that are adopting strict employment policies, “that make smoking a reason to turn away job applicants, saying they want to increase worker productivity, reduce health care costs and encourage healthier living. The new rules essentially treat cigarettes like an illegal narcotic. Applications now explicitly warn of “tobacco-free hiring,” job seekers must submit to urine tests for nicotine and new employees caught smoking face termination. This shift — from smoke-free to smoker-free workplaces — has prompted sharp debate, even among anti-tobacco groups, over whether the policies establish a troubling precedent of employers intruding into private lives to ban a habit that is legal. “If companies want to hire people based on reducing health care costs, I have a few statistics I would like to share.


According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) Hispanic women have the highest incidence rate for cervical cancer. African-American women had the second highest rate of getting cervical cancer, followed by white, American Indian/Alaska Native, and Asian/Pacific Islander women. Treating cervical cancer is expensive; better not hire a Hispanic woman! Add to that the facts that fourteen percent of Hispanics have been diagnosed with diabetes compared with 8 percent of whites. They have higher rates of end-stage renal disease, caused by diabetes, and they are 50 percent more likely to die from diabetes as non-Hispanic whites. Hispanic men aren’t looking like healthy hires either.


The Center for American Progress reports that adult obesity rates for African Americans are higher than those for whites in nearly every state of the nation—37 percent of men and nearly 50 percent of women are obese. African Americans have higher rates of diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease than other groups. Nearly 15 percent of African Americans have diabetes compared with 8 percent of whites. Not looking good health wise for African-Americans!


What about American Indians and Alaska natives? They should be healthy? Wrong! The prevalence of obesity is higher than that for any other population group. American Indian and Alaska Native adults were 2.1 times as likely as white adults to be diagnosed with diabetes. They were almost twice as likely as non-Hispanic whites to die from diabetes in 2006. In general, this group is 60% more likely to have a stroke than their white adult counterparts and American Indian and Alaska Native women have twice the rate of stroke than white women.


Cancer and other diseases are not really a person’s fault, but obesity is brought on by eating too much (just shut your mouth) and the same holds for alcohol consumption. Let’s allow companies to discriminate against fat people and alcoholics if we are going to ban smokers.


Survey data from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) indicates that adult drinking (12 or more drinks in the past year) and adult heavy drinking (five drinks on a single day at least once a month) are most prevalent among American Indians and Alaskan Natives and Native Hawaiian. Another reason not to hire from this group.


In 2009, African Americans had 20.5 times the reported gonorrhea rates of Whites and 9.1 times the reported rate of syphilis. Sexually transmitted diseases are easily preventable, so anyone who gets one is totally at fault. We don’t want to hire those kind of stupid people do we?

While I am being sarcastic, I might not be that far from the truth.


The New York Times story also reported, “One concern voiced by groups like the National Workrights Institute is that such policies are a slippery slope — that if they prove successful in driving down health care costs, employers might be emboldened to crack down on other behavior by their workers, like drinking alcohol, eating fast food and participating in risky hobbies like motorcycle riding. The head of the Cleveland Clinic was both praised and criticized when he mused in an interview two years ago that, were it not illegal, he would expand the hospital policy to refuse employment to obese people.“


Refuse employment to obese people? Why don’t we just ask a psychic to channel Adolph Hitler and get his opinion on discrimination in hiring practices? Heil and hire only healthy people.