idiotic fat policies. seriously?

[keryx]

If you haven't seen it yet, you should: at least one company cutting employees' pay for being fat. Apparently that's serious. I assume someone will press a legal challenge, but since fatness isn't exactly a protected -ness... Well, that's an argument in favor of the we-can't-help-it-fat's-just-like-gay position, right there [Leaving aside that fat is, in my mind, a lot like gay - a complex and individual combination of nature, nurture and choice just like many many other things].

The fucked up thing about the fat clause (which I don't expect will really take off, legal challenges aside - it doesn't seem like something most companies could sustain) is that it not only penalizes people for a -ness they may or may not be able to change, but it's not a -ness associated with disease. If I have normal blood pressure and cholesterol and reasonable activity and eating habits, I may yet be fat (indeed, as it turns out, I am), but have in no way increased health care cost (it's true - I get allergy meds once a month and generally don't even see a doctor more than once a year). Having no other indication of likely illness, I'd still get reduced pay unless I could lose weight, likely at the expense of my otherwise good health. That? Is just bad, expensive, corporate policy. Like, are we sure The Onion didn't report that? policy.

Comments

[keryx.livejournal.com]

I'm not arguing that a company that implements such a policy is randomly hating fat people. But it's emblematic of our cultural assumptions about fatness - if being male is correlated (and in fact, in some research more strongly correlated) with illness, one could also charge men for being men. That, of course, is and likely sounds ridiculous to anyone. Men can't help being men, however more likely that might be to kill them. And we don't know which part of maleness is the morbid part. What would we want them to change?

Fatness, on the other hand, is still assumed to be a sickness AND something fat people can control. It's a bizarre, circular form of logic. And yet few people consider that ridiculous. So few people, in fact, that when a company is feeling pressured by rising healthcare costs, it seems reasonable to them to target fat people (who are, of course, more expensive in theory to ensure - that is, after all, what insurance companies think). Is it all about fat hate? No, it's about money. But it's an economic issue aimed at fat people because fat hate and assumptions about fat are still so prevalent.

I'm not sure, by the way, that it's just shitty-job-having people who'll be screwed by this - it's anyone who isn't high-demand for whatever reason. But yeah, that does tend to mean people who already get paid less and have less horizontal job mobility, so not only do they have to accept the cut, but it also represents a greater percentage of their income.

[varsil.livejournal.com]

Men /do/ pay more for insurance (life/health/vehicle) than women do, simply for being men. Now, you can't fire men just for being men, or give them a pay cut just for being men... but give it enough time, and you might very well see employers subtly discriminating to save a few dollars.

I agree that a big part of the problem here is how much non-fat people feel that it is easy to become non-fat (because it is for them), and thus a character flaw, despite large amounts of evidence that a large part of it is genetically set.

I dunno. Another part of this that annoys me greatly is this whole notion that your company should be allowed to investigate your biology and act "in your best interests" (even though it's really theirs). I know that in the US it's pretty common for employers to insist on drug tests (not legal as a random thing here in Canada). Sounds damn close to serfdom to me.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

I hadn't thought of the big brother factor here (because whatever lip service a company might pay to "caring about employees' health", it's really economically motivated). You're right about that, though - it's creepy and weird, and I don't want my employer to be my mom.