By Brian Johnson - 6th August 2006
Europe’s employers have the right to refuse to employ people who smoke, according to EU employment chief Vladimír Špidla.
The Czech commissioner, in a reply to a written question by Scots MEP Catherine Stihler over an Irish call centre company advert that stated “smokers need not apply”, said the ban does not broach EU anti-discrimination laws.
Špidla said in a written response that EU anti-discrimination law prohibits discrimination only on the grounds of “racial or ethnic origin, disability, age, sexual orientation and religion and belief in employment and other fields”.
“A job advertisement saying that ‘smokers need not apply’ would not seem to fall under any of the above mentioned prohibited grounds,” argues Špidla.
Špidla’s comments were confirmed by a commission spokeswoman.
“It is not a violation within the anti-discrimination rules on a European level for an employer to put into an ad ‘smokers need not apply’,” said the spokeswoman, according to a Reuters report.
FT Europe quotes the director of the Irish company at the centre of the row, Philip Tobin of Dotcom Directories, saying that smokers “were anti-social and took too much sick leave”.
“If people are smoking on a coffee break or in their own time, they come back into the office and they stink,” said Tobin.
“If these people can ignore so many warnings and all the evidence then they haven’t got the level of intelligence that I am looking for. Smoking is idiotic.”
However, Špidla’s comments met criticism from both the pro- and anti-smoking lobbies.
Simon Clark of pro-smoking group Forest told FT Europe that “we all know employers discriminate on all sorts of grounds, from being too fat to the wrong colour hair. But for it to be so overt is depressing and shows that smokers are fair game.”
Anti-smoking group Ash called the commissioner’s views “bad public policy.”
“We are not interested in discriminating against people because they are smokers. We are interested in helping them quit,” said Ash spokesman Ian Wilmore, according to Guardian Europe.
“Our advice to employers would be not to do that unless there is a clear occupational reason why smoking is not possible.”
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