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Comment by bsder | Hacker News Reader

You're all missing the point. Some statistician worked out that nicotine use likely correlates to age and this gives them a way to fire old people.

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It doesn't work like that. If a hiring requirement is not "reasonably related" to duties performed on the job (I think we can agree nicotine use qualifies), and if the selection rate is then less than 80% of a group with the highest selection rate, then it's an Adverse Impact and is illegal.

https://www.hirevue.com/blog/what-is-adverse-impact-and-why-...

Shrug. As long as U-Haul doesn't get fined more than they save, it's a win.

Damn. That's a GREAT point and a concept I'll keep in mind from now on. Seems very similar to Nixon's drug war which was really a mechanism to continue legally discriminating against racial minorities.

However, I'm not sure it actually applies here given the surge of nicotine vaping in young people.

Existing workers are grandfathered in, the new policy applies only to new hires.

For now.

This is still basically being used to discriminate against older applicants.

Bollocks. Vaping is incredibly popular, to the point where Juul was taken to task for marketing incredably hard at high schoolers.

It's a nicotine ban, not a smoking ban. That means vapes too, which means plenty of younger workers tossed into the mix as well.

Care to take a gander at U-Haul's turnover rate?

Yes, but just because it could be worse doesn't mean it's not bad.

It sounds like current employees are going to have to sign the new employee handbooks eventually, which'll include this.

Is Juul not a thing anymore?

Hope no-one was dumb enough to write that down anywhere

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