LABOR

HOTEL WORKERS PLAN HUNGER STRIKE FOR LIVING WAGE

AP - A dozen airport-area hotel workers plan to stage a seven-day hunger
strike in support of a local living wage law enacted earlier this week,
labor officials said. The workers will begin their water-only fast
outside the Westin Hotel near Los Angeles International Airport. The
employees hope to dramatize the need for higher pay should airport-area
hotels and other business groups succeed in an effort to gather
signatures for a referendum on the law. It would be at least May before
a referendum could be called.

http://oneamericacommittee.com/news/headlines/ap20061130

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NEO-SERFDOM

MORE businesses are treating their staff more as serfs than as free
employees. True, they are not technically unfree laborers as they are
able to leave their jobs (to find similar employment elsewhere) but
increasingly employers are seeking the sort of control over the personal
lives of their workers that characterized various forms of unfree labor
including serfdom, indentured servitude and slavery.]

AMY JOYCE, WASHINGTON POST - In many states, it is legal to hire, fire
or promote based on what a company finds out about you in your nonwork
world. . . Weyco Inc., an employee benefits firm in Okemos, Mich.,
started nicotine testing with its employees last year. It instituted a
policy that makes it a firing offense to smoke, even off the premises,
outside work hours. . . More recently, the company expanded the policy
to spouses of its 175 employees. If the spouses test positive for
nicotine in monthly tests, the employee must pay an $80 monthly fee
until the spouse takes a smoking cessation class and tests
nicotine-free. . . Anita Epolito worked for Weyco for 15 years when she
was fired for refusing the test in 2005. "This is about privacy," she
said. "If you failed the blow test, you had to take a urine test. It was
so demeaning." She thought what the company did was illegal but soon
found out that because Michigan is an at-will state, she could be fired
for any reason, even for something she did in her off-hours. . . 30
states and the District have statutes that limit an employer's ability
to make decisions about an employee based on off-duty activities. . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/14/
AR2006101400105_pf.html

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SACHA PFEIFFER, BOSTON GLOBE - A Buzzards Bay man has sued The Scotts
Co. , the lawn care giant, for firing him after a drug test showed
nicotine in his urine, indicating that he had violated a company policy
forbidding employees to smoke on or off the job. The suit, filed
yesterday in Suffolk Superior Court, is highly unusual because it
involves an employee who was terminated for engaging in legal activities
away from the workplace. The lawyer who filed the complaint said he
believes it is the first of its kind in the state. . .

"Employers should be greatly concerned about how employees perform their
jobs and what happens in the workplace, but how employees want to lead
their private lives is their own business," said Boston lawyer Harvey A.
Schwartz, who represents Scott Rodrigues . . .

"Next they're going to say, 'You don't get enough exercise' or 'Both
your parents died of a heart attack at age 45 so we don't want to hire
you because you're more likely to need medical care,' " Schwartz said.
"I don't think anybody ought to be smoking cigarettes, but as long as
it's legal, it's none of the employer's business as long as it doesn't
impact the workplace."

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