Citizens relinquish another biochemical privilege "voluntarily"

A company near Lansing, Michigan, generated some news recently by snooping into its employees off-work activities and firing employees who smoked—actually there was apparently no private-eye going around looking into windows, but the employees had to submit to testing that demonstrates tobacco use in general.

Weyco, Inc., ironically a medical-benefits administrator, claims smokers are more expensive to insure and its policy gave its employees a choice to quit or to be terminated.  Four employees refused to be tested and were fired as of January 1, 2005.

Naturally, this sort of corporate behavior has a lot of supporters from both the blind-obedience-to-authority crowd and the your-perfect-health-über-alles aficionados.

From a purely contractual perspective, how can one argue such a policy violates libertarian principles?  After all, trade is a two-way street: you consent to hire me under your conditions and I consent to work for you under my conditions.  If the conditions match up we have a deal.

Yet in my humble opinion, the sanctity of contract presumes some degree of economic equality.  Such equality exists in a vibrant free market full of creative workers—the majority working as independent contractors—and full of employers who are not predominantly entrenched via government privilege.  Today we have neither.

Corporations benefit from state coercion (tax policy, regulation, payoffs, special franchising, legal monopolies, and legislative favors to name a few) and most are virtual arms of the state.  This is true especially in medicine and health care, where a company only exists if it sucks up to the bureaucracy and its millions of rules and costs.  One's private life should be entirely off limits to such companies.

If the Bill of Rights states the government can't do it, the corporation can't do it.  That's the way it ought to be.  Therefore, the Fourth Amendment against searches and seizures and the Ninth Amendment

…trade is a two-way street: you consent to hire me under your conditions and I consent to work for you under my conditions.  If the conditions match up we have a deal.

preventing invasion of privacy apply.  No drug testing whatsoever.  Unless there is a provable material reason to be particular-substance-free for performing a particular job.

Judging from the public statements of Weyco's officers, they don't have a problem with drugs per se.  Indeed, I can see them jumping at the chance to medicate their employees into mindless drones, so long as the employees don't have any choice in the matter.  Weyco is supposedly worried about the long-range health cost of the employee.  Okay, fine, let the employee with lifestyle issues pay more for insurance.  No big whoop.

But Weyco wants to play Health Nazi, "You vill not smoke, or you vill not vork vit me."

As a longtime libertarian firebrand, I salute the Defiant Four for sticking it to The Man and walking away.  They're too good for this Hitler-Goebbels management team, anyway.  The company is surely worse without them.

A company that prioritizes rigid conformity above embracing the creative spirit—can you see FDR or Winston Churchill (both avid smokers) bowing to convention in order to keep some crummy job?—loses in a free market.  Any new trend Weyco may have started toward blood purity will die out as the creative costs become apparent.

In this connection, allow me again to recommend Dr. Richard Florida's book, The Rise of the Creative Class(1).  This book eloquently presents the case for a new world of work that transcends the state-buttressed, downsized, fear-based employment world many of us inhabit today.  Creative-class employment is the wave of the future.  Be there.

I admit to feeling bad for the Defiant Four.  I hope they can find other work conveniently.  If they sue Weyco and win, I'll cheer… even though I feel it's still better to leave the government out of it.

I felt the same way about Casey Martin, the handicapped professional golfer, who ultimately went to the Supreme Court to compel the PGA to let him ride a cart.  To me, he's a special case and obviously—out of simple humanity—should have been allowed to ride.  But the PGA has a right to be a horse's ass, and suffer public opprobrium, rather than be forced into good behavior by the government.

Despite the health and insurance arguments, I can't bring myself to see the Weyco leadership in a positive light.  They want healthy worker bees?  Why not ban chocolate éclairs and sleazy sex?  Or hasn't anyone figured out how to test for those?

No connection exists between a person's unique biochemistry and any meaningful measure of performance.  Unless, perhaps, your job is boring and repetitive—such as auto assembly work or low-level computer coding.  Then a case can be made for mandatory marijuana use, which makes monotonous activity interesting enough to keep your attention.  Or so I'm told.

In the end, a society without biochemical compulsion or prohibition is the ideal.  A famous major-league baseball pitcher from the 70s expresses it best:

Drug testing?  Sure, I've tested 'em all.  Still I don't think it ought to be mandatory.

— Bill 'Spaceman' Lee

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1. Florida, Richard, The Rise of the Creative Class. Perseus Basic Books, Cambridge, MA, 2002. back to text