Cold Turkey

If policymakers at Chicago's USG have their way, nary a puff of cigarette smoke will fill the air at any of its acoustical-products-division plants -- or, for that matter, in the cars or boats or homes of some 1,500 of its employees in eight states. In one of the boldest prohibitions ever attempted by a U.S. employer, USG has told the workers they will not be allowed to smoke on the job, or anywhere else. The company plans to use mandatory medical exams to check up on compliance and enforce the ban.

USG justifies its action on the ground that it constitutes a safety program. At the targeted plants, which produce acoustical ceiling tiles and insulation products, workers are exposed to potentially hazardous dust from mineral fibers. Research suggests the risk of contracting lung diseases because of this dust is greater for smokers than nonsmokers. USG is not planning to ban smoking at its headquarters or other facilities where workers do not face the dust hazard.

Effective immediately, USG will not hire smokers at the acoustical-products plants. This week the company will begin giving periodic physicals and pulmonary-function exams, and a Smokenders program will be started for the third of its workers who smoke. Should smokers' health profiles fail to improve -- an indication that they are sneaking cigarettes at home -- they may be fired.

It is one thing to ban smoking on the job; that is already done by such organizations as the Christian Science Monitor and Greyhound. But labor lawyers are convinced that USG is treading on wispy legal ground in trying to extend its prohibition past working hours. USG's plan, they say, will run into problems of discrimination against minorities or against the physically disabled. Editorialized the Chicago Sun Times: "The issue here isn't whether smoking is good or bad. The issue is this: How far can an employer reach into the employees' personal lives? Not this far."

USG's smokers entirely agree. Complained Walt Marotz of Holyoke, Minn., a worker in Cloquet, Minn.: "They're starting to pry into our personal business now. I'll stop smoking at work, but what I do at home, there's no way they can stop me."

Critics concede that there could be a medical justification for unusually tough antismoking regulations for employees at plants that have dust from mineral fibers, but argue that USG is mainly interested in fending off workers' future liability suits. USG's strategy could spread to other lung- threatening industries -- chemicals and rubber, for example -- in which companies are beginning to realize that they need to do everything they can to warn their workers of health risks if they are to avoid choking legal problems.