Smokers fume as employers enforce ban.

Rows are bubbling up as health trusts, some police forces and universities act to stub out the habit at work. By Sian Griffiths

SOPHIE BLINMAN made the headlines just before Christmas: she was asked to leave her new job after 45 minutes when bosses discovered she was a smoker.

The 21-year-old, recruited through an employment agency, was dismissed from her temporary telesales post at Dataflow Communications in Somerset. She didn’t light up in the company buildings but had admitted to staff that she was a smoker.

The company, which has 33 staff, last week reiterated its policy: “We do not hire smokers and the policy is on the website. Sophie was a temporary employee . . . if she had been interviewed for a permanent position it would have been discovered that she was a smoker and she would not have been offered a job.”

It’s a story to strike fear into the hearts of puffers everywhere — even as they embark on new-year resolutions to give up the habit. Bosses in health trusts, police forces and even universities are taking an increasingly hard line on those who smoke at work.

If you are an employee in the public sector, 2006 will be the year you have an added incentive to quit. It may cost you your job if you don’t.

Under the health bill that is now going through parliament, all NHS premises and government departments have to become no-smoking zones by the end of this year.

Even before the bill becomes law, which is expected in the next few months, some health-service bosses are bringing in strict policies in advance of the December deadline. London is at the forefront of the change — smoking was banned on all NHS premises in London from January 1.

Staff are being helped to quit with some trusts offering nicotine-replacement therapy or time off for those who want to get help to stop.

The boundaries are being drawn more tightly in the public sector than in private companies. While companies have provided refuges for smokers to take cigarette breaks on roofs or in their grounds, there will be no such provision in many hospitals. Smoking outside and even smoking off duty if you are in uniform will become a disciplinary offence in certain trusts.

March 8 — No Smoking Day — is the day the Suffolk East primary care trust has chosen to bring in its ban. All its 3,500 hospital staff will face disciplinary action if they are caught smoking on NHS premises, while they are on duty or while they are wearing their uniform.

Although the aim is to be “compassionate” about the new condition of service — with help for staff to qive up — the trust confirmed that if someone persistently lit up on hospital premises or was often seen smoking in uniform, “it would become a disciplinary matter”.

The move has already caused controversy. While public-sector trade unions such as Unison have been calling for a ban for years, some are also worried that smokers may end up being victimised by overzealous bosses.

In America countless companies, police forces and municipal governments refuse to hire smokers. Some insist on nicotine tests and even use lie-detectors.

Britain is still some way from such extreme measures, but there are signs that we may be inching in that direction and voices are beginning to be raised in protest.

Karen Webb, director for the eastern region of the Royal College of Nursing, for instance, has reservations about Suffolk East primary care trust’s decision to extend its policy to “staff who are seen smoking wearing their name badges off NHS premises”.

She said: “We support the smoking ban on the premises, but off the premises it’s more difficult . . . our view would be that these organisations have bigger things to deal with than policing the smoking habits of staff who are not on NHS sites.”

There is another row bubbling up in North Wales where the police force has scrapped cigarette breaks and banned smoking for all staff while at work or on police premises, including car parks.

The policy came into effect last week and the force warned that any breaches would result in disciplinary action.

Richard Brunstrom, chief constable of North Wales Police, said: “Smoking is a nasty and dangerous habit, which not only damages the health of the addicts themselves but also, through passive inhalation, the health of those around them.

“Smokers generally have a much worse attendance record due to smoking-related illnesses and they are more likely to suffer injuries at work. Smoking-related absence from work also adds to the pressure on colleagues.”

But it was the wording of an advertisement for traffic police officers in the principality that brought open confrontation. When the force decided to advertise the jobs with a clause excluding smokers from applying, the North Wales Police Federation sprang into action.

“The smoking ban started at the beginning of the year and there’s a 50-50 split among staff about whether it bothers them,” said Richard Eccles of the Police Federation, who disputes the national attendance and sickness statistics for smokers.

“There was a lot of concern about the advertisement that said, ‘Don’t bother applying for these jobs if you’re a smoker’.”

The federation’s challenge prompted the North Wales force to take legal advice on the job advertisements. The advice has yet to be made public.

Eccles said: “The problem is that staff were employed under one set of rules and now, halfway through their careers, they are being told that some jobs are not open.”

But he accepts that there is probably little, legally, that smokers can do. “It is discrimination, but not the kind that you can take to an employment tribunal,” said Eccles.

Hugh Robertson, head of health and safety at the TUC, said that every effort must be made to cut the number of people who die from passive smoking at work each year — a figure that he says now stands at 700, 48 of whom worked in pubs and clubs.

But Robertson agreed that it was important people were not “stigmatised for something that is legal”.

He said: “If you drive smoking underground, you create more risks. If people can’t smoke openly anywhere, what will they do — go into a stationery cupboard and smoke there? They will just smoke in a clandestine way.”

The Sunday Times

January 08, 2006

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