Below is a case that happened a few years ago where a man was fired for smoking at home, against company policy. The courts have upheld the rights of the employer to do this. What are your thoughts about this? Should a company be able to dictate your behavior when you are in your own home?
One fall day in 2006, Scott Rodrigues arrived for work at the Massachusetts lawn and garden company that had hired him several weeks earlier, only to hear bad news.
The results of a drug test required for employment showed that Rodrigues, 30, had ingested a substance expressly forbidden by company policy: nicotine.
Rodrigues knew of the company's anti-smoking policy, but argued that he never smoked on the job; he smoked only at home. It didn't matter. He was fired on the spot.
A few weeks later, Rodrigues filed suit in state court, the victim of a growing workplace trend: Beset by escalating health-care costs, employers are increasingly seeking to regulate employee behavior - at home as well as in the workplace.
"In the last couple of years we've seen a huge rise in employer actions based on off-duty legal activity," says Jeremy Gruber, legal director of the National Workrights Institute, a nonprofit organization in Princeton, N.J.
Employment lawyers refer to this phenomenon as "lifestyle discrimination" - and they believe the practice will continue to spread.