The Written Word
for December 29, 1999

The anti smoking ban by the Workers Compensation Board is getting a lot of knickers in a lot of knots and I can’t help wondering why.

Smoking is very bad for the health and, in any kind of close quarters, smokers force others to share their habit. Those who are patrons and do not smoke, have the option of leaving. Workers do not.

Workers are entitled to safe working conditions, the Workers Compensation Board has decided that smoke filled rooms are not safe places to work and that would seem to me, ends the matter.

It’s not as if both publicans and patrons haven’t had time to consider the matter – two years lead time was given and any smart publican should have seen the writing on the wall long before that.

What are the arguments against the ban?

The smoker says it’s a civil rights issue – he has a right to smoke. But if it’s a civil rights issue surely my right to go into a public place and not have my health threatened is an even higher right. Higher yet … much higher yet … is the right of a worker, who does not have my choice in the matter, to have a safe work atmosphere. The right to smoke is clear – but as with all rights when it competes with that of another a judgment must be made as to which right is to prevail.

There is the economic argument by the publicans that they will lose money. I say that’s nonsense but even if it’s true, so what? Are the pub owners saying that their right to make money supersedes the rights of their employees to a safe atmosphere? God help us if that ever becomes a principle again as it was before the Trade Union Movement started demanding safety as well as money back in the mid nineteenth century. Moreover, the pub owners haven’t taken into account the people who don’t patronize their places because of the smoking. My wife and I are two such people and we’re scarcely alone.

The argument is put forward that in remote and cold communities the law cannot be enforced because employers will simply refuse to enforce. If that’s so, then the WCB should step in with the full power of the law and, if need be, close the places down. It’s true that many places are cold this time of the year and patrons will not want to step outside for a smoke but again I say too bad. Are we to avoid enforcing laws for people who don’t happen to like them? And again, whose interest is the WCB mandated to protect? If the cold winter’s night syndrome is accurate, publicans should build and ventilate a smoking room.

Of course this is all very hard on smokers. Just as it is in restaurants and on airplanes. But no one is unfairly picking on them – all I say and others like me say is this – smoke yourself to death if that’s your wish but don’t force me to share your habit in public places. The worker no doubt says the same thing but adds "at least patrons can refuse to patronize – I have to work in this stench."

What about the huge unemployment that will follow this ruling. I say it’s hokum made up by people who are quite prepared to flout the law for a buck. Other jurisdictions have demonstrated that in fact trade will increase. But even if it didn’t surely it can’t be argued that we will expose workers to danger just to keep the employment rolls up. That analogy, suitably stretched, would have workers back inhaling asbestos and coal dust or working down mines where decent safety measures might compromise the owner’s bottom line.

This Workers Compensation Board ruling is sound and must be adjusted to – as simple as that.