Don't blame the Rubenesque; Unhealthy employees: corporate drain--or gain?

Determined to hold down health costs and dramatically improve staff attendance records, a number of American companies are declaring all-out war on smokers and the obese. According to the Wall Street Journal, Union Pacific recently "stopped hiring smokers in seven states as a pilot program to weed out potential high-cost workers." Meanwhile, General Mills now imposes a $20-a-month "smokers' surcharge" on health premiums for those who puff the putatively evil weed.

Elsewhere, similar measures are being taken against both the pleasingly plump and the perennially ill, on the assumption that their lifestyles, bad habits or outright vices are jacking up health care costs. According to one health industry official cited by the Journal, after reviewing the company's large-employer database it was found that "11.5 percent of the population accounts for 80 percent of health costs."

I hold no brief for the ill, the infirm, the chunky or those addicted to nicotine. But in taking such measures, these activist companies may be entering uncharted waters. Historically, smokers, the overweight and the chronically ill have played an important role in building the juggernaut that is the American economy. John Kennedy ordered 2,000 Havana cigars the day before he signed trade sanctions against the Cuban government. Jim Bowie was chronically ill, as were Andrew Jackson and Jefferson Davis. Franklin D. Roosevelt spent the Second World War in a wheelchair. Ulysses S. Grant was no stranger to the liquor cabinet. And Orson Welles, Jackie Gleason, Kate Smith and William Howard Taft were all enormously productive Americans despite being charter members of the clean-plate society.

What worries me about these heavy-handed intrusions into employees' personal lives is the possibility that corporations may be throwing out the baby with the bath water. None of us has any way of knowing whether smoking or being overweight hampers productivity, much less creativity. For all I know, the turbine engine, the SUV, the reverse collateralized mortgage obligation and the Internet may have been invented by rolypoly chain-smokers. It is entirely possible that some of the most productive, creative Americans thrive not in spite of those few extra pounds or their nicotine eravings, but because of them. A lean, mean, nonsmoking machine may constitute a healthier work force, but that does not automatically mean that it will be a more enterprising, ingenious or emotionally satisfied one.

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Consider this fact: Many string-bean employees stay that way because they maniacally exercise on their lunch breaks. Meanwhile, their tubbier colleagues remain chained to their desks, scarfing down the nachos. The first group may feel better, but are they actually working any harder than their portly counterparts? I think not. Moreover, it is hard to see how employees who spend an hour jogging around the parking lot without showering afterward are contributing to a more salubrious work environment.

What worries me most is that the antismoking, anti-fat movement might be only the tip of an Orwellian iceberg. The Journal itself raises this unnerving specter, suggesting that discriminating against employees with "unhealthy lifestyles" could lead to punitive measures against employees who enjoy skydiving or have bad dietary habits. An employer has the right to tell the work force what to do at work. But it does not have the right to crack down on the Big Macs and the Mocha Chai Rocky Road Fandango. Remember: Benjamin Franklin was pudgy. It didn't seem to hurt him.

And where will it all end? Buoyed by their new behavioral modification successes, will employers next tell employees to stop driving motorcycles, engaging in nocturnal scuba diving or parking their cars in bad neighborhoods? Mightn't major corporations risk losing some of their most talented, creative employees to competing companies that brazenly advertise: "We Don't Care How Fat You Are, You Can Come Work For Us. We'll Supply the Stogies!"

I don't like it. I don't like it at all. Coaxing employees into changing their lifestyles might be a good idea, but forcing them to do it is not the American way. It sounds like the kind of Machiavellian social engineering that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. This great nation was built in part by men who smoked too many cigarettes and women who are too many Twinkies. Those who spit on their legacy do so at their peril.