Padraig Reidy is a smoker. He is a smoker who supported the smoking ban, but can’t see the connect between that and the story on which he is commenting.
News that Breckland council in Norfolk is proposing a clocking in/out system for cigarette breaks can only be greeted with dismay.
And so it should to any reasonable person. The arguments against this idiocy have been made elsewhere, so I won’t rehearse them again. The thing with the anti brigade, whether it is anti-smoking, anti-drinking, anti-obesity or any other activity the puritans take a dislike to, is that if you allow them a millimetre, they’ll steal a parsec and come back to cut out your heart. They are a many-headed hydra that is never satisfied.
There are two main problems with Breckland’s proposal: the petty determination to change behaviours and lifestyles, and the ever-creeping culture of presenteeism that the council seems to be encouraging.
These are valid points. It is not up to employers to change behaviours and lifestyles. Outside of work, how we live our lives is none of their damned business. I have always made a point of keeping my professional life and my private life separate and have never allowed employers into that private space – because it is none of their damned business.
The other point is a cancer that is creeping into our attitudes – the idea that we must be present for hours, days, weeks on end, irrespective of whether we actually achieve anything productive. There comes a point where we cease to be productive because we are burned out. Breaks are a necessity to help us re-charge. A decent lunch break means coming back to the job feeling refreshed and ready to face the rest of the day. A balance between work and the rest of our lives is essential for our physical and mental health and our productivity.
The idea that smokers are taking more breaks than non-smokers is anecdotal. As a non-smoker, I take breaks, too. Sometimes, I’ve been known to wander out with a smoking colleague and while she puffed away, we would discuss a work problem. I didn’t die, by the way. Sometimes we would wander round to the local cafe, while we ruminated on some work issue over an alfresco coffee and a fag. Just getting out of the office away from the ringing phones gave us a different perspective. It helped.
Padraig is right, therefore.
But, do go and read the comments. There are some gems in there. It is reading such stuff you realise just how much misanthropy is out there in Guardian-land…
We don’t hire smokers, the cost too much in health benefits and time off work. It is pretty easy to detect them in an interview, they smell bad.
And:
Smokers are filthy, they drop butts all over the place like animals. If they insist on going outside they should not be paid for the privilege.
5 fags a day say, at 25 minutes, that’s what? Nearly half an hour that a non smoker does not get. They should clock out. They need to be stopped.
And:
Personally, I consider every hindrance – or “punishment” – to smoking wellcome. Smokers are harming themselves, they are harming other people through passive smoking they have to endure, they are harming their loved ones when the eventual medical difficulties caused by smoking arrives and they are going to end up causing the society to pay for their addiction. I don’t think they need any pampering, just shovel more hindrance and guilt over them, it’s going to save money and lives.
And:
And another thing, they should not be allowed to smoke directly outside pubs either. There is little worse then having to walk through a thick fog of cancerous fumes and bedraggled desperate addicts as I go in for my evening pint.
I think I’ll stop there before I slit my own throat.
The reason that smokers are getting all this shite is quite straightforward…the spiteful smoking ban legislation has simply given carte blanche to every areshole in the land to attack and persecute.
Can you ever remember this foul crap happening before the ban…for many decades no problems with smokers was ever mentioned anywhere. I’ve said before and I’ll say again…this cow’s arse of a statute has driven a poisonous wedge between decent honourable people. Thank you – you reprehensible, duplicitous half-wit politicians!
Seriously – read what this twat has to say:
Dr Steven Johnson
I’ve complained about these comments to Cath Miller…you can too if you want to. [email protected]
As a libertarian, I’d have thought that you’d champion an employer defending his property rights in this way? I’ve not heard much libertarian opposition to employers forcing their staff to clock out to go for a shit; and yes, some do that. Personally it seems rather petty and a piss poor way of managing staff, who would be better managed by objectives. But hey, most of us already knew that most employers are exploitative cunts.
It’s not a property rights issue. Property rights were usurped by the smoking ban. This is about personnel management and in this case, petty, vindictive and piss-poor personnel management.
There is also this underlying theme that seems to becoming the norm; that it is okay for the state, employers and even individuals to poke about in the lives of others, to hector them about their lifestyle choices and to try to make them change their ways if they do not fit with the acceptable lifestyle choices decreed by the current thinkers. Change “smoker” for “homosexual” and see just how deeply offensive and immoral that approach is. Whether someone chooses to smoke or not is up to them. It is not up to the employer, the state or any pecksniffing busybody who thinks otherwise.
I’ve worked in an environment where every break was logged and counted to the second. It wasn’t pleasant and the morale was dreadful. It is a really bad idea and is piss-poor personnel management. Just because I haven’t written about it before doesn’t mean that I don’t have a view or that I don’t disapprove. I do.
Padraig talks of “presenteeism” and he is right. Getting up and walking away for a few minutes is good for one’s concentration and ongoing performance. We are not machines and shouldn’t be treated as such. In the comments there are people who proudly point out that they get in early, stay late and don’t take breaks. They then complain about those who follow their contracted hours and do take breaks. I know which one has a balanced outlook and is more likely to remain productive in the long term and it isn’t the presentee trying to impress everyone with their faux dedication.
Sadly, JJ has hit the nail on the head. It’s just human nature. Make it legal (indeed, put signs everywhere reminding people of the fact!) that homosexuality is illegal or that non-whites should be shepherded outside and are somehow “different” to the “norms,” and see what happens.
The number of supposedly tolerant people would vanish like a morning mist and you’d see abuse everywhere, gays being refused jobs, being denied the right to foster, refused entry to public buildings, denied access to train platforms, Doctors calling for them to be receive no medical treatment as their illnesses are undoubtedly caused by their homosexuaity etc etc etc – basically, exactly what we are seeing with smokers. But then, what do you expect when such divisiveness between “norm” and “demonised” is State-sanctioned!?
This is the most worrying part of the Ban, for me – it went beyond pub closures and property rights years ago (as important as those things are). The still small minority of nutters, denied the ability to hate almost any other group, have descended on smokers with a vengeance. Just check out Dick Puddlecote’s “Catalogue of Anti Psychosis” for proof of that. These people are undoubtedly mentally ill…… and some of them are positions in power or have access to people in power. Scary times.
It’s not a property rights issue. Property rights were usurped by the smoking ban. This is about personnel management and in this case, petty, vindictive and piss-poor personnel management.
It is about both. I happen to agree with your opinion of its merits as a way of managing people. But it is also a question of the employer’s property rights. The employer is paying an employer to work and if he is not working then the employer may take measures to address that issue. The difference between me and a libertarian, is that I don’t see property rights as absolute, which is why I support laws that compel employers to provide certain minimal conditions for their employees, even if it does infringe the employer’s property rights. The right to paid breaks being one of those. I draw no distinction between a smoker who wants to recharge his batteries by having a smoke and a non-smoker who wants to have a coffee or a short walk around the office.
I don’t think this has anything to do with the so-called smoking ban – cannabis users would love a ‘ban’ a liberal as the smoking ban – but with assertive employers, who feel that they can treat a non-unionised workforce in any way they like. The only reason people on the net are up in arms about this is because it affects smokers. Yet in call centres, breaks are tracked to an infinitesimal degree yet I have seen little indignation from the right in respect to that management style.
But that is not property rights at all. It is a contract between the employer and the employee. It’s a management or discipline issue. It has nothing to do with what an employer may do with his property – and I don’t for one moment assume you mean that employees are property 😉
If it was about property rights, the employer would have the right to decide whether or not to allow smoking on his premises. As it is, that decision has been taken away by the ban, so sensible solutions such as smoking rooms no longer apply.
Neither do I and neither would a sensible employer who values productive employees.
It will depend upon the nature of the agreement between the two parties. Is payment time based or outcome based? If it is time based and an employee needs to be in a particular place to conduct the employer’s business, then I can understand a strict approach to breaks, but will never accept that clocking in is a good idea. On the other hand, if the agreement is outcome based, then time at a specific location is largely immaterial. That said, you can find yourself expected to work all hours on that one, so there are downsides to both systems and I’ve been on the receiving end of both.
Yes, I know. I couldn’t get out quick enough. The reason you haven’t seen indignation is probably because it isn’t in the news and all breaks taken by everyone are treated equally, unlike those working for Brekland Council. And, as an aside, there isn’t the undercurrent of treating a particular group as untermenchen as is currently happening with smokers.
I find this issue a little difficult to come to terms with. In my job, eberyone has a morning break, a lunch break and an afternoon break.
The smokers fag it during those breaks, the none smokers read a book or something.
No one takes breaks outside of these, smoker or not.
It was the same when I last worked in an office.
Surely if people are taking extra breaks to fag it or whatever, then that is an issue of bad management.
There is no need to make smokers clock out when they go for a fag if they only go for a fag during designated breaks.
Is this problem, one that pertains to the public sector rather than the private?
I don’t know. I mentioned my own experience above, but there weren’t any formal breaks as we were all on a management grade, so were paid a salary according to the grade, not according to hours. We took breaks as and when we felt inclined. The work got done and that was how we were measured.
I find it rather funny to see Guardian readers on the side of the employer all of a sudden, quoting ‘productivity’ and ‘cost’ to businesses. They really are a most hypocritical species, aren’t they? 😉
“The work got done and that was how we were measured.”
You can’t say fairer than that then.
Still reading the comments. It’s got to be the first time a lefty has quoted Policy Exchange to argue their case! Haha.
The research concerned was, of course, total excrement.
But that is not property rights at all. It is a contract between the employer and the employee. It’s a management or discipline issue
The employer is paying money (property) to his employees to work. Therefore it may be argued that he is entitled to defend the value he gets from the disbursement of that property. I can understand your resistance to conceding this as a property rights issue. I believe it to be a clear case where property rights cannot be sacrosanct and where the law must interfere in the way that an employer may choose to run his business.
I find it rather funny to see Guardian readers on the side of the employer all of a sudden, quoting ‘productivity’ and ‘cost’ to businesses. They really are a most hypocritical species, aren’t they?
Maybe they are hypocritical but they aren’t the only ones. I doubt there would be much indignation from the libertarian right were an employer to oblige wheelchair bound employees to clock out because of the extra time that they take going to the toilet.
You’re right, but that’s because you are trying to stretch property rights beyond breaking point. Once people enter into an exchange, we move from property rights to contract law. And, yes, the employer is within his rights to expect a fair exchange and value for money. And, yes, there is a place for law to cover the exchange. As for libertarians believing that property rights are sacrosanct, I suggest you look at a couple of recent discussions on leylandii and wheel clamping to realise that it is not that straightforward and libertarians have differences of opinion about where the line is drawn. In principle, though, that line falls where it causes harm to others.
Really? Where is the underpinning evidence to support this assertion? This issue isn’t about what people do, it is about the de-normalisation of target groups that is going on. If you follow what we say, we are equally annoyed when people who drink are denormalised and people who are deemed to be overweight are denormalised. If and when other groups are denormalised, our reaction will be equally scathing.
Really? Where is the underpinning evidence to support this assertion?
At least ten years of reading net libertarians and noting their resistance to using the law to fight discrimination in the workplace. That is why I said I doubt it because it seems unlikely that people who think employers should be free to discriminate against the disabled would be too concerned if employers were to oblige the disabled people to clock out to go to the bog