For years, employees lit up while working production lines. Later, as attitudes shifted, smoking was restricted to designated areas.
"There were little blue corrals near main aisles, and their smoke just wafted out into the air," recalls retiree Lyman Roll, who campaigned unsuccessfully, starting in 1986, to restrict indoor smoking.
A city ordinance that took effect in January finally forced the smokers outdoors, where the company erected shelters for them.
Roll became a pariah in some circles for his anti-indoor smoking crusade. He tried to change things quietly at first by talking to managers and persuading a vice president to tour a smoke-free Atlas Van Lines facility, for instance.
When he tried to get smoking restricted to breaks and lunch periods, "I was told by a company official that they did not want a smokers' war in the plant," he recalls. "They weren't going to address it until the union requested it."
The company's insurance surcharge for smokers - $300 initially, then $500 since 2004 - generated bitter feelings.
Nobody anticipated the trouble that would ensue from the union's 2007 grievance over the fees. The sheer number of employees suspended last month was unusual. Managers were forced to call back laid-off workers to keep the plant running.
"I've never seen this many people suspended other than over a strike-related issue," said Evansville labor attorney Charles Berger.
The stakes involve more than unpaid fees, said Chicago employment attorney Barry Hartstein of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP.
"If you open the door and you cave, what value do the company's policies have?" he asked. "Sometimes there's such an intangible factor a company has to stand up. Otherwise you might as well have no rules at all."
Barbara Rose writes for the Chicago Tribune
