Win a bottle of champagne ...
Tuesday, February 17, 2009 In his article (see previous post), the Indy's Jeremy Laurance reports that ASH bans smoking but not smokers among its own employees. I know that ASH employs ex-smokers (among them director Deborah Arnott). But do they really employ people who were smokers when they were interviewed for the job, and remain so today?
A bottle of champagne to the first person who can find out and post the results of their enquiries on this blog. I need the name of at least one ASH employee in London or Scotland who fits the description above. (If you can get a quote from the relevant people, even better.)
Failing that, I may award a bottle for the best contribution on the subject. For example, if ASH did employ a smoker, what would the smoking policy be? Would they be allowed to smoke in their own time at lunch? En route to a meeting? Would they be given time off to attend a smoking cessation course?
If you need to call ASH the numbers are 020 7739 5902 (London) and 0131 225 4725 (Edinburgh). Over to you ...
PS. ASH Scotland employs 27 (twenty-seven!) people. In parts of Glasgow 37 percent of adults smoke. I wonder how many smokers ASH Scotland employs?
Reader Comments (13)
Why would a smoker want to work for ASH? If any do though, surely they're an untapped goldmine... it'd be very useful to have a few soldiers behind enemy lines!
Blast, spoke to Hazel Cheeseman, Senior Policy Advisor at ASH today and forgot to ask her.
Simon Clarke makes great play of the fact that he is a non-smoker. Does this make him more, or less, trustworthy or reliable than if he was a smoker? Or is his smoking status totally irrelevant? I suggest it is the latter.
Likewise, what difference does it make if an employee of ASH smokes or doesn't smoke? I can see that this might be an issue if it was a policy of ASH that all smoking be banned forthwith, but they've never called for this.
Smoking remains perfectly legal, provided that you don't do it in enclosed public places. If an ASH employee wants to smoke, then the same law applies to them as to everybody else.
Alan, Ash has a extremely vindictive policy towards smokers , and that's an understaement, and it's well known that they'd like to wipe them off the face of the earth, so why would they employ a person who represents everything they depise. I'd be very surprised if they did.
If you think they don't want to make smoking illegal...where have you been? Step by lying step is there method to exactly that, their ultimate goal.
Advancing Smoker Hate. Staff Rulebook, page 54.
As you will no doubt be aware, the primary purpose for which our organisation receives public funding is to campaign against the scourge of tobacco and to help enable people make the correct choices about their health. It is our ultimate aim to STAMP OUT SMOKING STAMP IT OUT THERE WILL BE NO MORE SMOKING! I HATE IT I HATE IT! NO SMOKING! NO SMOKING! But we recognise how deeply-engrained the vile repulsive and completely unnecessary habit is in our society, so we operate a policy of “next logical steps” towards this aim. We are presently unable to exclude active smokers from our staff, as we wish to be seen attacking the behaviour and not the person. However, we do make the following recommendations for active smokers, which all employees are expected to adhere to.
1/ There will be no smoking at any time during the working day, including at lunchtime. The nuisance of stale smoke lingering on clothing can tip some of our more fragile-minded employees over the edge. Also please make a distinction between work-clothing and what you wear in your leisure time.
2/ If you really must smoke outside working hours, please wear gloves so as to prevent the appearance of tobacco-stained fingers the next day. You will spend much of the working day rebutting tobacco-industry stooges on internet forums, so be conscious of those who may have to use a computer-keyboard after you.
3/ Please refrain from smoking on your journey to work. Any employee arriving at work smelling of evil will be sent home. Extra Strong Mints will not help you here, as our Debbie has a nose like a whippet and can detect a Rothmans-butt in a stagnant sewer. The correct smell for exhaled-breath is that of a leaking gas-main. To achieve correctness it may help you to chew garlic, and independent peer-reviewed studies have proved this to be an effective countermeasure against wickedness.
4/ In accordance with current legal requirements, all public-sector employees are entitled to join a final-salary pension scheme. As we expect and require active smokers not to live beyond retirement-age, these monies may be paid into an offshore trust fund made out in our name.
5/ We will, at the very least, terminate the employment of anyone bringing the organisation into disrepute. Therefore active smokers are required to wear a yellow badge during working hours and to make every effort to look less healthy than our senior officers. Smokers are required to bow their heads at fifteen minute intervals and cough into a tissue whilst reciting the willpower-mantra [see appendix 22]. Skin should give the appearance of premature wrinkling, eyes should look yellowed and breath should be laboured to the point of wheeziness. This may sound difficult to achieve, but we have found the overuse of chemical air-fresheners in our offices to be most effective at bringing on the required symptoms.
6/ We have negotiated a discount on NRT with our partner-providers at GSK and will be pleased to help any employee rid themselves of yellow-badge status. Affected employees refusing to take up this offer may be terminated at our discretion and without warning. You may be surprised at just how many smoking-related fatal diseases there are, not least smoking-related arsenic poisoning and smoking-related sudden loss of brake-fluid in your car.
Brilliant Basil Brown!
You forgot to mention that the yellow badges must be star shaped, in deference to the EU.
Basil
Fantastic! So good it may be adopted by ASH (re-worded slightly for the puritans) as their policy.
WTF has this country come to? It beggars belief. But we keep on laughing and smiling, and we'll definitely outlive the parasites. History cannot be re-written, whether they want it to or not
Alan, sorry to pop your naive bubble, but I lost my job of 4.5 years as PA to the Board of Directors because I smoke!
Up until the beginning of Feb smokers within the company were allowed to 'pop out' for a smoke and most did not take advantage of this. However, as more smokers joined the company, some did take advantage, but rather than take the logical first step of having a meeting and pointing out that certain smokers were over doing it a bit and that this was unacceptable, they brought in a blanket smoking ban during working hours. Despite the fact that our offices were based on 2 sides of the main road through the industrial estate, it would still be considered gross misconduct if caught smoking whilst traversing the totally outside, public space, often saturated in diesel fumes from large lorries.
Being that I suffer from depression and anxiety I approached the MD and explained that this was not something I could cope with and that I had never, in the past, taken advantage of being able to pop out for a smoke. I also worked straight through my lunch break in order to leave an hour early each day.
I was told that the new ruling was non negotiable and I was paid to leave the company that week.
So, even if ASH have not demanded that all workers be banned from smoking during working hours, etc, individual companies are making the ruling for themselves. I have also been informed that some Temp/Employment agencies will not take smokers onto their books!
Discrimination is not, apparently, allowed in the UK, unless you are a smoker!
This is the way to go, turn it around on the bastards, just like they did with Lyn, and lets see them all playing by the same rules by seeking out who smokes in the ASH offices/company, why should there be one rule for us and another rule for the almighty legislators. No, we should'nt stand for it and let them see what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Us workers are too compliant, we should start playing them at their own game as in when they made it a blanket ban for smokers in Lyn's work place, smokers should have continued smoking while crossing the road to their other office and when pulled up for it by their 'surperiors' they should have looked blankly and said 'it wasnt me I wasnt smoking you must have imagined it' and then if and when you were fired, bring them to the equality/unfair dismissal tribunal!
Its the way to go in these crazy times.
Ann, believe me I did think about it, but unfortunately, when testing the water on what my chances might be, was told absolutely nil! The problem, it seems, is that once smoking enters the equation, we don't have a leg to stand on! On that basis I had to take the money and run, especially with the current economic climate, as had I been sacked for 'gross misconduct' I would have left with nothing!
I wrote to my MP and he passed the message on to good old Dawn Primarolo who responded with the same standard tripe that she always does, with an added paragraph stating that "..with regard to my employer, whoever has management responsibility for any premises is legally responsible for preventing smoking! The Health Act 2006 requires only enclosed or substantially enclosed premises that are public places or workplaces to be smokefree. However, it does include powers to make non-enclosed places smokefree if there is a significant risk that people there might be exposed to significant quantities of smoke. The individual management of any premises are perfectly within their rights to decide to extend their own smokefree policy to cover all areas."
The above is quoted from her letter. She obviously took no notice of the fact that in order to cross from one office to another a public highway needs to be traversed, nor is she concerned, apparently, about the amount of diesel fumes from countless lorries using the estate all day, just a few wisps of cigarette smoke that might, it appears, cause some poor passer by to drop dead with a coronarary!
Her final paragraph spouted the usual red herring by saying that due to the action on tobacco, overall adult smoking prevalence has been reduced in England over the past decade from 26% in 1998 to 22% in 2006 (which we know is not actually a decade!) and deaths from smoking realted diseases has reduced! Apparently there are still 87,000 deaths a year in England alone and smoking remains the biggest single cause of preventable deaths and the biggest single cause of health inequalities!
We all know this is a load of tripe and I replied to my MP asking him to challenge these statements and also if he thought it significant that the percentage reduction rates of smokers were given between 1998 and 2006 - a year prior to the ban coming into effect!
I am awaiting a response and do hope that I get one, although on this occasion I have not yet had an acknowledgement of my letter! My MP, for interest, is Sir Michael Spicer.
They slipped that one in, Lyn, about the Act giving powers to extend the 'smokefree' policy to non-enclosed spaces if there's a 'risk'!!!!
I didn't realise this. Did anyone else realise this? If non-enclosed spaces are covered by the Act, is smoking in such spaces punishable by the same fine?
Up til now I understood that smoking outside, although in breach of the owner's smokefree policy, was not legally enforceable...
Joyce, I think the point here is
"The individual management of any premises are perfectly within their rights to decide to extend their own smokefree policy to cover all areas."
That means, I believe, that as it not actually covered by the Health Act, fines are not applicable, however, as an employee, your neck is on the line with regard to your employment! Perhaps an even greater incentive than the fines?
Of course, employers/business owners know they have the full backing of the government, so breach of human rights in the workplace, or whatever, will never come into play.
Sorry Joyce, yes the previous sentence does say
"However, it does include powers to make non-enclosed places smokefree if there is a significant risk that people there might be exposed to significant quantities of smoke."
But what constitutes significant risk? Surely a few wisps of cigarette smoke out in the open air, especially when there are huge lorries passing by all day, cannot be deemed a risk!
The point here is that the management of where I worked were not making the open air smoke free due to any kind of smoke exposure, it was purely to stop people from popping outside for a quick smoke. It would not be up to the management of a private company to enforce a ban on health grounds on a public highway; however, on work place rules that is a different matter. As I said before, legally it seems, that however wrong an employer might be, if smoking enteres the equation, the smoker (employee) does not have a legal leg to stand on!