No, you’re not. The price is a group rate, that’s the point. You take the average cost of the group and that’s the cost of the health plan. The employer pays X times the number of employees.
Whether you use the health plan or not, the X amount has been paid on your behalf.
Sort of like other benefits… think of a “free internet” deal. Your employer gives you free internet access at home. It doesn’t matter how much you use it, or if you use it at all, but the price your employer has paid the ISP is part of your “pay”.
The original question was
So let’s say health insurance costs $100 per employee per year. If you’re a smoker, your company decides not to pay that $100 for you. So you’ll make $100 less than the non-smokers?
That’s how it works, the company pays a flat rate per employee.
If you use the health plan more than other people, then you’re costing the insurance company money, not your employer. But hey, that’s the whole point of insurance, isn’t it? Insurance companies are basically betting that you won’t cost them more, on average, than you pay them.
This is a creeping foreign ideology (Yankee) that’s trying to drive a wedge inot our society. Canadian companies are covered by *public medical * that is based on universality, it costs $X.XX per employee, regardless of whether they smoke, drink, have pre-existing conditions or whatever.
The group insurers don’t make companies fill out forms showing how many employees are smokers, alkies, gay, etc. It’s an outright scam by this company to impose conditions on employees that were not there when they were hired. A warning of how lousy the labour laws in Michigan (and the whole USA) really are. This is Canada, the government elected by the people makes the rules, unlike the warped democracy south of us where the companies tell the government what rules to make.
And everyone forgets that smokers pay $8 in tax for every pack, drinkers $20 a bottle in extra tax that you don’t have to pay if you don’t smoke or drink. Watch out, they’ll talk you into a ‘condom tax’ because that implies users are sexually active and therefore a social risk!
[quote=“MiG”]
What you’re saying is that smokers should be paid just:
Salary + benefits - health insurance.
In other words, smokers should be paid less than non-smokers? Even if they do the exact same work?[/quote]
I feel that the subtraction of health insurance in your equation is proportional to the amount of time in a year that smokers spend on smoke breaks.
Now, assuming that both smokers and non-smokers work at the same rate, we would see in a graph of Productivity vs. Hours Working that Non-Smokers are a better investment (dollar for dollar) than Smokers.
y= Productivity
x= Hours Working
m= Rate of Work
b= days off (zero)
I remember amber going on smoke breaks every hour or so. now she is worse. She smoke so much and some times in the middle of the night gets up to just have a smoke WOAH!! bad…
In the time that I’ve been at Athletes World, we have had 2 smokers as employees, and both didn’t last very long. Both were constantly asking for more breaks than were allowed, and they both came back into the store and stunk the place up. Not the best kind of image to give off when you work in retail.
They didn’t stop working with us because they were smokers, but because they were lazy.
I don’t know what the “man” says about this issue, but is it unreasonable to ask employees to not come into work reeking of smoke? This would be even more critical in a retail environment. Personally, I find the smell very distracting. I know that perfume has been banned from some work environments. Is this the same thing?
Hey, some people are allergic to perfumes. Serious respiratory problems can occur if they are exposed to too much of the wrong stuff. Then again, some people are allergic to cigarette smoke too. Maybe we should ban smoking and perfume because both pose significant health risks to certain people. Maybe the insurance companies should cancel the health insurance of the people allergic to the smoke and perfume; while they’re at it, why not ban people with family histories of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes as well. They are certainly a drain on our health care system. Let’s only allow healthy people to have health care, that will keep all of our premiums low.
There now, I feel much better after that little rant.
I don’t know what the “man” says about this issue, but is it unreasonable to ask employees to not come into work reeking of smoke? This would be even more critical in a retail environment. Personally, I find the smell very distracting. I know that perfume has been banned from some work environments. Is this the same thing?
I agree with you that the smell of smoke is totally distracting, personally it makes me sick. Perfume being banned from some work environments is not quite the same because, usually, that is because some people employed there are allergic to perfume. I think that is the main reason for it.
Once when I was an ad salesman a guy kicked me out of his store in PG and told me how dare I come in and bother him while stinking of smoke. I don’t thik he could even spell b-a-t-h. I had a lovely smirk when I read the intolerant pig went bankrupt.
Do you guys know West Vancouver is trying to outlaw ‘bad restaurant smells’? Any surprise it’s not the stale grease from Wendy’s or KFC but the offensive smell of a Persian restaurant behind the complaints?
It’s too fucking bad if the guy next to you smells like cigarettes, garlic, curry, BO or even shit. It’s your problem, not theirs. If you can’t take it work, associate with, or shop somewhere else.
Jeez this is a Prince Rupert forum, nobody ever work with fish? My roomies workclothes locked in the laundry room could overpower the freaking catbox even if you were passed out with your face in it. I still gag thinking about his nylon sweaty-fishy sox he tossed onto a heat vent once… bleaaagghh my gf picked them up with tongs and clothespin on her nose!
hey there were 6 guys in our place. nobody made her pick them up! we woulda left them until they just faded away… and we had at least 20 friends who hadn’t checked out how gross it was yet.
