A Company's Threat:
Quit Smoking or Leave.

By Ilan Brat

Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. is taking its campaign to stamp out smoking among its workers to an unusual length: It's threatening to fire smokers beginning next fall.

The threat represents the latest attempt by an employer to try to reduce health-care costs by targeting smokers. In January, four employees at Weyco Inc., a small medical-benefits administrator in Okemos, Mich., lost their jobs after they refused to be tested for tobacco use. Scotts, which has 5,300 U.S. workers, is one of the largest companies to have put an outright ban on smoking even off the job.

With medical expenses rising, corporations are increasingly focusing on the employees who they believe account for the majority of health-care costs. Some companies have tried to lower the number of smokers in their work force by offering employees money and counseling help to quit smoking. In April, Humana Inc., a Louisville, Ky., health insurer, asked its employees if they had used tobacco in the previous 12 months. Those who said they hadn't got a $5 bonus in their paychecks each pay period. General Mills Inc. imposes a $20 a month surcharge on the health benefits of smokers.

Weyco, the medical-benefits administrator, announced a tobacco-free policy in Sept. 2003. It used a device similar to a breathalyzer to test for tobacco use. In January 2005, four of its 190 employees chose not to take the test and were forced to leave.

Scotts offers to pay for smoking-cessation programs and products. But the October ultimatum "is way over the top by today's standards," said Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, a coalition of major corporations. "Most employers are still in the mode of 'You've got to have positive incentives.' "

Firing workers who won't stop smoking is illegal in the 30 states that have laws protecting smokers, according to the National Workrights Institute, a not-for-profit organization that focuses on human rights in the workplace. But elsewhere, unless workers fall in one of a few protected classifications defined by state and federal laws, employers have more leeway.

Some lawyers said Scotts could be vulnerable to disability challenges if it fires people who smoke. "Once you start regulating outside conduct, the question is where do you stop?" says Marvin Gittler, an employment-law specialist and managing partner with Asher, Gittler, Greenfield & D'Alba Ltd. in Chicago.

Smokers who are "really trying" to quit, even after the deadline, won't have to worry, allows Jim Hagedorn, Scotts' chief executive. "If you work with us, and we know you're working with us, I don't think you're going to end up getting fired."

Still, Scotts stresses that it expects employees to make a good-faith effort to improve their health. Scotts estimates that about 30% of its workers smoke.

Next October, the Marysville, Ohio, company said it will begin randomly testing about 20% of its work force nationwide where it is legal to do so. (Ohio is among the states that don't have specific smoker-protection laws.) The company says it hasn't worked out the details of how to test employees. Workers found to be still smoking or using other tobacco products habitually could be fired, Scotts says, as long as they work in states where such termination is legal. In states that do have smoker-protection laws, employees who are on the company's medical plan could see their health-care premiums become "substantially higher," though details aren't final yet, the company adds.

The tobacco initiative is part of a broad wellness program that includes a $5 million fitness gym and health clinic opened last month near the company's headquarters. Employees on the company's medical plan will have free access in the clinic to a physician, nurse practitioners, diet and fitness experts and a pharmacy with generic drugs.

In return, every year employees will face a strict requirement: Take a health assessment through a program affiliated with medical-information Web site WebMD Health Corp. -- or pay $40 extra a month in health-care costs. The health assessment starts with a form to be filled out online. Then, a "health coach" contacts the employee and arranges a treatment regimen for any health issues. The employee must follow through with the recommendations or pay higher premiums, though the exact amount hasn't been worked out yet.

The wellness program is administered by Whole Health Management Inc., a Cleveland company. Whole Health Management also works with Continental Airlines, Sprint Nextel and Nissan, among others.

Scotts' Mr. Hagedorn said he has "gotten pretty religious" about his employees' health recently. Last year, the company abolished smoking from its corporate campus, and the company cafeteria has cut down on fried food, instead offering up baked salmon and other fish. Vending machines dispense more "granola stuff," he said. By company mandate, employees who leave work during the work day for the gym won't be penalized.

Mr. Hagedorn, 50 years old, once smoked two packs of cigarettes a day but quit 20 years ago after his mother died of lung cancer. He said he understands how difficult it is to quit smoking but also how important it is. "Are we going to stand by and watch our people get sick? The answer is no," he said. "Success here is not firing anybody."

Linda Sutkin, a 31-year employee of the lawn and gardening-products company who works in customer service, won't have that worry. After a company-sponsored smoking-cessation program and Zyban, a medication to help quit, the 50-year-old smoked her last cigarette in January 2004. She misses the camaraderie of smoking with friends on breaks but is glad she quit.

Other smokers at headquarters are concerned about the company's October deadline, she says. "The consensus is like, is this the end or is it going to lead to something else?" she says. "Are they going to watch what we eat?"

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