NHS trust to ban nurses from smoking on breaks and even carrying tobacco. Appears to think nurses are indentured labour.
Posted Under: Civil Liberties,Trade Unions
Up in Scotland there has been some disquiet over the plans the Grampian NHS trust to enforce particularly over-the-top smoking ban. The board has been considering plans to ban nurses from smoking while on breaks or indeed at any time while in uniform. Even carrying tobacco about their person could, under the plans, have them disciplined or sacked. Patients, meanwhile, face being refused treatment for smoking anywhere on the hospital grounds -indoors or outdoors.
According to the draft plan:
“Staff identifiable as NHS Grampian employees must not smoke during their working hours or when wearing their NHS Grampian uniform or badge. Staff must also not smoke when representing NHS Grampian on or off NHS Grampian premises.”
Excuse me, but when did these skilled employees become human billboards? Clearly the board do not think it sufficient for these public servants to merely offer up their time and their hard work to help care for the sick. No, they must submit their personal lifestyle choices to the cause of Grampian’s latest health drive.
Indeed NHS Grampian appears not be particularly au fait with contemporary employment practices. Since serfdom went out of fashion, the basic premise has been that while workers sell their labour power, they do not hand ownership of themselves and their bodies to their superiors. Nonetheless the Grampian board appears to want sovereignty over what their employees breath in, regardless of whether they are at work.
Gordon Stephen: Amicus rep and wannabe feudal overlord
Thus these plans – which are reminiscent of headteachers admonishing 12 year old boys that they are ambassadors for their schools – do not merely target smokers but are demeaning to NHS employees in general. It is, therefore, understandable that the unions have opposed them. What is particularly unfortunate is that the Grampian Employee Director – Gordon Stephen – who has pushed these changes is a national rep for the Amicus union. I urge the members of Amicus to consider whether a boss who won’t even recognise the rights of employees to do as they please in their own time is best placed to represent workers’ interests. I don’t know if their membership rules contain a clause against being a tyrannical dickhead, but if they do then they should certainly apply it to this vile man.
Reader Comments
They have a pretty similar (if slightly less draconian) policy at the hospital where I work too – staff can smoke during working hours, but only off the premises and when not wearing uniforms or visible ID badges. It’s a fucking ridiculous policy, I agree.
Excellent, have blogrolled. Look forward to more.
Yeah smoking’s bad. So is alcohol. I don’t see anything being done about the deaths that alcohol causes every year. Sure they tell us to drink responsibly but everywhere you go it’s “stop smoking”, “smoking will kill you and everyone around you and the whole world”. People these days are made to feel bad for smoking as if it makes them less of a human being, but I don’t see the same thing being done about alcohol. I’ve never heard of someone going out for a cigarette and coming back and beating his wife and kids, or crashing their car into a school assembly. But no, smoking is the ultimate evil apparently