Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 11, 1993 TAG: 9307080046
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY LINI S. KADABA KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Some smokers have objected to bans that push them outside the office building. Others welcome them as ways to enforce healthier living.
On the national level, groups on both sides have drawn their battle lines, slinging words like grenades.
"That's what we call tobacco apartheid," said Tobacco Institute spokesman Tom Lauria, who has heard from smokers upset about workplace smoking bans. "They feel unjustly cast outside the mainstream of the company." The institute backs restricted-smoking areas.
William Godshall, executive director of the Pittsburgh-based SmokeFree Pennsylvania, countered: "Why do we allow people to poison other people? It's respiratory rape." His group has pushed legislation to ban smoking in all workplaces.
Based on a survey of Markel employees, the company plans to write a smoking policy, according to William Hackenyos, vice president of administration. "We are concerned about the needs of both groups of people," he said, adding that most of Markel's nonsalaried workers smoke.
As the company hammers out its policy, many other businesses face a similar struggle.
According to a 1991 survey by The Bureau of National Affairs and the Society for Human Resource Management, 34 percent of U.S. companies have banned smoking. Another 34 percent restrict it.
"This is a process," Godshall said. "Five years ago, most companies allowed smoking everywhere. Now about half still allow smoking everywhere. That's primarily in companies with less than 50 employees."
Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency classified secondhand smoke as a serious cancer-causing agent, more dangerous than radon. It estimated that secondhand smoke caused 3,000 cases of cancer each year in nonsmokers.
The announcement rekindled the debate around smoking in the workplace and prompted many companies to review the subject and others to confront it anew.
Compared to nonsmokers, smokers have a higher absenteeism rate; require more health care; spend 8 percent of the workday on smoking, according to the American Lung Association, a nonprofit lobby and research-support organization.
Besides the health concerns, a no-smoking policy makes economic sense for companies and may protect them against liability, the lung association said.
At Markel, workers have responded to company smoking bans with mixed feelings. On both sides, some people feel they have been targeted. Smokers feel exiled from the office. And in some cases, those who have complained about smokers say they have suffered recriminations, such as one woman who told SmokeFree that she had been fired because she asked for a smoke-free work area.
But companies continue to adopt smoking bans. This fall, the Philadelphia Gas Works plans to expand its smoking policy to include all areas of its facilities. The ban follows the national trend to prohibit smoking in the workplace, said PGW spokeswoman Audrey Dean.
"It's good company policy," she said. Dean, an ex-smoker, estimated that 25 percent of the PGW work force smoked. To help those workers, the company will offer a smoking cessation program, she said.
On a recent sunny afternoon, a group of PGW workers gathered in a small park across from the modern Philadelphia office building.
"I was mad," said William Ambrose, a senior treasury clerk, who smokes half a pack at work. "I feel all of a sudden I have no rights."
Come fall, he, like other smokers at the company, will have to go outside the building to smoke during work.
But other longtime smokers welcomed the policy.
"I feel it's a good opportunity to try and quit - again," said Ann Land, manager of community relations, as she puffed on a cigarette. "I know I've really done damage."
"When all the public banning of smoking happened," said staff attorney Laureto Farinas, "I did feel my rights were being violated. But when you look at the health and safety aspect, then I wonder, `Do I have rights?' "
by CNB