Tyranny of the majority
Monday, September 27, 2010 I shall be on BBC Look East tonight. A council in Norfolk is proposing to make smokers among its workforce clock in and out when they go out for a cigarette. How petty. Apparently a poll of the workforce showed a majority in favour. What did they expect? The majority don't smoke!
I'll comment further later. I've got to pop over to the BBC's Cambridge studio to do a recorded interview for the local evening news.
Update: The Daily Mail has the story online HERE. Note that it is a Conservative council. I am quoted (accurately!) as follows:
"I have been told that the council carried out a poll of staff to see whether staff supported the new policy. We would expect the majority to be in favour because the majority of people are non smokers. Once again we see the tyranny of the majority.
"It's completely unfair and prejudicial to pick on smokers and imply that they are slackers or take too many breaks.
"There are a lot of non-smokers taking long coffee breaks, browsing non-work internet sites and taking personal calls so I don't see why smokers should be picked on.
"Really what lies behind this is that the council is trying to embarrass people into giving up when in reality it's none of their business."
Reader Comments (17)
If they are to bring in 'clocking in and clocking out' it should be across the board. Going to the toilet or getting a cup of coffee should also be included otherwise smokers are being discriminated against.
People with weak bladders or who drink too much tea use the toilets more than the rest so why should the rest suffer? Why should colleagues take up the slack because one of the workers had a dodgy kebab the night before?
In our workplace we have a 15 minute teabreak in the morning and one in the afternoon. If you want to sit in the tearoom or stand outside smoking, the choice is yours. If you feel like getting up and walking away from your computer for a few minutes to clear your head this is allowed too, whether to go for a quick smoke or grab a cup of Nescafe.
No one takes the mickey and this makes for a happy workforce and good employee relations.
Will they be forcing people to clock in and out every time they skive on Facebook or another internet site? I doubt it. Smokers are the only legitimate target for persecution.
Just another thought.
Given that councils are going to have to initiate cuts accross the board is this a way of finding out who smokes and putting them in the firing line when the redundancies come?
I wonder would the council ask Muslims to clock out when they are saying their prayers?
Presumably employees of the Norfolk council get official breaks when they should
be entitled to do what they want, including go outside to smoke.
If people are taking extra breaks other than those to which they are normally entitled, then perhaps there would then be this need.
The Two Ronnies joke is that council workers have been banned from looking out of the window in the morning, so they have something to do in the afternoon.
Apparently 2/3 rds of the average council worker's day is wasted anyway.
"The study published on Friday by management consultancy Knox D'Arcy argued that over two-thirds of the working day of junior council staff was "lost.
It claimed that the 68 per cent of working time that was not spent productively was usually as a result of poor supervision.
The research also promoted private businesses by saying they typically had more robust systems that generated more personal accountability for performance.
It claimed that the 68 per cent of working time that was not spent productively was usually as a result of poor supervision.
The research also promoted private businesses by saying they typically had more robust systems that generated more personal accountability for performance.
It claimed that the 68 per cent of working time that was not spent productively was usually as a result of poor supervision.
The research also promoted private businesses by saying they typically had more robust systems that generated more personal accountability for performance.
Improving productivity within local government could "significantly offset" the government's deficit reduction cuts and ensure that the same amount of work could be done with 500,000 fewer staff, the research claimed. "
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/94296
BTW under Health and Safety law if you work in front of a PC you are entitled to 5 minute break every hour.
What about workers who work off site or are driving to their next job.
Just watched that. They didn't really give you a fair crack. You should have been on with the tory bloke at the end.
Yes, I was originally booked to be in the studio, live, but they changed it so that my interview was recorded (and edited) in advance. C'est la vie.
Of course, the inevitable result of this will be that smokers will be much more reluctant to do that little bit extra when it might be necessary. If you run your workplace on the principles of control and surveillance, you end up with a cowed, resentful workforce devoid of initiative.
Two points here need to be considered (excuse me for not being able to write English perfectly):
1. Since it is the smoking ban itself that forces business owners to send the smokers outside, when they want to smoke, business owners should ask the government for compensation if productivity has fallen as a result of the smoking ban (which is very likely to be the case - see below).
2. Since May 2010 it has been a scientific proven fact, that smokers (and other nicotine users) are performing better than non-smokers (non-nicotine users) because the nicotine boosts several areas of the brain - fx. attention, working memory and fine motor skills.
Hundreds of human experiments have shown this over the past 40 years without much media attention. This new big meta-analysis considered the best 48 randomized controlled studies - the authors have controlled for nicotine withdrawal, and the results are significant:
The Proven Positive Effects of Nicotine and Tobacco
Other studies have shown that smokers can work for longer periods of time without breaks than non-smokers, if they are allowed to smoke:
The effects of cigarette smoking on overnight performance
The same results can be found for smoking drivers and pilots. If you could match two exactly alike workers - with the exception that one is a smoker & the other a non-smoker (non-nicotine user) - the smoker is likely to be the better worker of the two, because of the nicotine.
Maybe someone should check if the productivity rate in British business crashed from mid 2007 to see if there is an association?
There's the knotty problem of maternity leave to consider when you open a can of worms like this. Best of luck to the expectant Mother, but must we all pay for her child. ? Personnally I believe we should, but perhaps a majority would like her to "clock out" also.
I go outside every so often to smoke ,but I work in the private sector.
That means i'm worth my salt.
I suspect someone high up in that council, thieving taxpayers money for their inflated salary, is a rabid anti smoker.
Or some of the employees are prodnoses and whingers .
We call them trouble makers in the private sector and usually sack them.
I worked for a council in the eighties for a year ,I left ,I could'nt stand it .
Most of them are institutionalised and incapable of holding down a real job anyhow.
Most of the upper echelons are no better than criminals.
Sadly, it's not just the Public Sector, Specky. Like you, I work in the wealth-producing sector of society - for one of those ghastly American corporations with a kick-arse philosophy cunningly hidden behind a we-care-about-our-workforce face.
In fact, they 'care' so much that - having taken over the company I'd originally been working for - the first thing they did was to get rid of the Smoking Room (where the conversation was always lively and entertaining, and all the interesting NON-smokers used to come), and THEN ban smoking in the car-park of all places - on the grounds that it interefered with 'the comfort and enjoyment of others' who chose to sit there (???????). And all this over a year before the Ban came into force.
Frankly, if I live for another hundred years (which God forbid), I'll NEVER understand the mentality of these people.
But Religion and Rationality have never been easy bedfellows.............................
Just goes to show MartinV this disease did spread across the Atlantic.
The anti smokers were originally what's known in the states as "operators"
Good examples are Glantz and Gore experts in making fortunes from bullshit.
From Melbourne Australia.
A very interesting site and I am glad, as I am SICK and TIRED of being looked up on and treated like a LEPER just because I am a LEGALLY entitled and high paying TAX paying smoker in LEGAL LAW, in this so called FREE western and free WORLD we live in..
IF they want to stop us smoking then they should STOP all areas of SMOKE.
That/Which includes from the Food industry,Metal industry,Transport industry,and
the smoke and hot air from the so called intelligent pollys that are in the councils and parliaments in London who are being payed by the like of TRUE WORKING
workers like I and my sons NOT like them with their Dictatorial, Bully Boy attitudes and their Hitler,Stalin,Mao,Socialist Engineering and Manipulating idolatry ideas which are taking away our Freehold Freedoms and Rights GAINED from the Magna Cartas of the 1200s signed by my great extended Grand fathers which includes the family's of Stuart and Hanover Kings of Great Britain.
Albert Hopkins Shirley.
.
Interesting post, AHS -
We don't get too many Aussies blogging here (alas).
It's especially sad to see the Diggers - once the very epitome of pugnacious contempt for authority - rolling over like the rest of us before the juggernaut of State-sponsored thuggery. Does Crocodile Dundee wear a patch these days ?