FATTIES - Get ultimatum from Reliant Energy Co.: lose weight or lose wages--or even job

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Houston Chron

Aug. 8, 2001, 11:47PM

Obese Reliant crews get heavy ultimatum

Linemen told lose weight to keep jobs

By JANETTE RODRIGUES Copyright 2001 Houston Chronicle

Lose the pounds or lose your wages -- possibly even your job.

Reliant Energy employees say that is the gist of a May memo to employees who use equipment with weight limitations like ladders and cherry-picker trucks.

Obese linemen and electricians have until November to slim down to 255 pounds or risk reassignment, less pay or ultimately their job, union official Rick Childers said Wednesday.

The new guidelines requiring employees to weigh no more than 280 pounds -- which includes steel-toed boots, tools and safety gear -- took effect this month because of Reliant safety concerns.

The guidelines affect at least 30 of the 900 workers who use equipment with weight limits, said Leticia Lowe of Reliant Energy.

This pressure to shed pounds in the name of a career is not unique to Reliant's linemen.

With the nation in the midst of a weight epidemic, and the obsession to be thin more pervasive than ever, obese employees say they are the new underclass of the American work force.

More and more overweight workers are filing obesity-bias suits and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaints against employers. In response, some states and municipalities have added weight to the groups protected under their anti-discrimination ordinances.

Still, higher health care costs have some employers looking at workers' waistlines, with excess pounds and sedentary lifestyles contributing to higher rates of diabetes, high blood pressure and other maladies.

For Reliant Energy, the push for svelter employees hinges on manufacturer safety guidelines that equipment such as bucket trucks carry no more than 300 pounds, Lowe said.

During some safety training exercises, she added, some workers were so overweight that they could not use their safety belts to climb a pole to rescue a co-worker in an emergency situation.

"We want them to be fit for duty," Lowe said. "It all goes back to safety and not putting their lives at risk."

Childers said if the affected employees don't lose the excess weight in six months, they will be put on 30-day unpaid leave to comply or find a new job with the company. If they are unable to do either, they will be terminated.

A Baylor College of Medicine expert said a safe weight loss is one to two pounds a week, or 28 to 48 pounds in six months.

"People who lose weight quickly tend to (regain) quickly," said Dr. John Foreyt, director of Baylor's Behavioral Medicine Research Center. "It's just not a healthy practice to make changes dramatically."

Childers said the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Linemen Local No. 66 filed an unfair labor practices complaint against Reliant Energy with the National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday.

"Some employees' jobs are in jeopardy," he said. "I probably have some pretty good-sized fellows who are under the gun immediately because they are in the 300- to 350-pound range."

Childers suggested that the company assign larger linemen to trucks with higher weight limits.

"We have other trucks with 500-pound limits available," Childers said. "They could retrofit other trucks, but they told us that would be too expensive."

One of the employees affected by the guidelines is worried he won't make the Nov. 1 cutoff. He enrolled in a weight loss program, but it is slow going.

"This has put us in a bad situation," said the anonymous worker, who fears retaliation. "You are talking about a man's livelihood."

He said he doesn't know if the guidelines are discriminatory, but he does believe that most of those affected are older employees with the company for 25 to 30 years. He admitted that some have high blood pressure and diabetes, often a result of excess pounds.

According to a workplace discrimination study, the union has reason to be concerned.

Last year, newspapers reported that a business management expert analyzed 29 weight discrimination studies and found that fat bias is more common than any other form of discrimination, including race and gender.

Mark Roehling, an assistant professor at Western Michigan University's Haworth College of Business, said employers often discriminate against overweight people when it comes to firing, hiring and pay levels.

-- Anonymous, August 09, 2001

Answers

If you are sitting in a chair taking calls from customers and the company starts giving you ulitimatums about being overweight you would probably have some cause for action against them. But to expect their linemen to hold their weight to 255 pounds or less seems reasonable to me. Even at 255 pounds a person will have a hard time working on poles or even ladders. Overweight is a choice we make by overeating, simple as that. Some jobs can't accomodate that choice.

-- Anonymous, August 09, 2001

I think this is only the beginning. Just as the anti-smoking campaign first started out with providing separate facilities, then to forcing smokers outside, then, in many instances, went to no smoking at all anywhere on the property, so will this anti-overweight campaign extend its range. I agree that lineman should be svelte enough to wear safety equipment but why not try a bit of positive encouragement, like a small bonus for losing X pounds and another every six months for as long as the weight is kept off, something like that.

As for the fatties who have diabetes, studies show conclusively that diabetics have a harder time losing weight than others, even though they may never consume sugar again. It's added stress they don't need.

-- Anonymous, August 09, 2001


I'll bet the mandate came from a persons or persons who aren't fighting a weight problem. What really needed to happen long ago was a clear stipulation of job requirements, written down, with clear penalities: for example, "Linemen must be able to fit into safety harnesses without modification to the harnesses. Failure to do so will result in a mandatory transfer to x."

but trying to impose such rules now seems unfair. If I were in management, I would the rules for new workers and leave some type of "grandfather clause" for the senior workers. As OG suggested, I'd offer bonuses for losing weight and/or try to transfer extremely large workers to other positions or put a crow bar in the company funds and modify some of the equipment.

Gordon, if fighting fat were merely an "over eating" problem for many, we wouldn't have the problems with obesity in this country that we do. Granted, there are many folks who live on high fat junk food for a variety of reasons, but there are plenty of others who have medical problems (and money problems!) that prevent them from exercising or getting the exercise and proper diet that they need.

-- Anonymous, August 09, 2001


I agree that there is a lot to be said about overweight problems. However, in the end it comes down to calories taken in versus calories being burned off each day. There were *zero* cases of overweight prisoners coming out of either the Nazi concentration camps or the Japanese POW camps. Compare that to our current prisons.

I don't mean to step on any toes here since I know that most people who are overweight are very sensitive about it and don't appreciate being lectured to. They are fighting their own little food addiction problem. Addictions are very difficult to deal with, in any form, as I have personally seen.

Still, I don't think there is any real likelyhood of overweight people being hounded by employers. Even the airlines tried to do that at one point with flight attendants, but got beaten down in the end. Expecting, or even demanding, that people who are involved in risky jobs (such as linemen) keep their weight within a reasonable range seems sensible to me.

-- Anonymous, August 09, 2001


I think that calories or over eating are not the reason for all this fat that is seen everwhere these days. In my opinion it's the wrong foods. The harder people try to lose weight the more they gain. A study of the foods that cause weight gain shows that it is the CARBOS that put the weight on. If you were eating only fat and protein you could eat as many colories you wanted and not gain a pound !

-- Anonymous, August 09, 2001


There is a book I am reading right now titled The Holographic Universe, by Michael Talbot. I will put a link at the end of this post, but if it doesn't work go to Amazon.com and look it up.

Basically what the book is offering us is a compelling new model for explaining how we think and how we construct our own individual realities. It is rich with stories from both professionals and various cultures from ancient times up to now. What it is attempting to show us is that we all construct a holographic image of who we are, what we enjoy, what gets us upset, etc, etc. The only way we can truly change any behavior pattern is to change the hologram itself.

I have done some study on addictions and found out how very difficult it is to make changes regarding any addiction. Some addictions are behavioural, some chemical, which means drugs including alcohol. I gave up drinking some years ago and never went back to it, not even one drop, at any time. It is not a struggle for me. But I have friends who go to AA on a regular basis in order to deal with occasional temptations or emotional periods where they fear they will turn back to alcohol to deal with some pain or other upsets.

What has happened here, I think, is that I made a change in my hologram and my friend did not. He/she is exercising "control" over their own hologram but hasn't actually rewritten the code there yet. That seems to be the key. If we don't actually "rewrite" the hologram to reflect some newer reality it will still carry the old image and that image is in danger of coming forward at any time.

The book mentioned is an excellent one to get some new ideas on how and why we behave the way we do in various areas. It offers some suggestions on how to make changes in areas we would truly like to change but are having difficulty making those changes. In the end, if we don't rewrite the hologram we will just keep doing the same old stuff, no matter whether that is good for us or bad for us. Psychology has had almost no success in dealing with such things. They mostly fail in their attempts. Psychiatry often doesn't even really try to rewrite the hologram (which many of them don't believe even exists) but simply write us a prescription to numb us with drugs.

Link

-- Anonymous, August 09, 2001


Barbee,

There *is* something to what you are saying about the type of food. What you are referring to is called a low carbohydrate diet and was all the rage at one point about 25 years ago. And it worked, but not without some dangers. We actually go into keytosis from that diet.

I just happened at that time to read a doctoral thesis by someone going for their Ph.D. in chemistry. The subject of the thesis was a hormone we produce in the pituitary gland which will cause fat to be burned off as fuel. But, that hormone is "turned off" when we supply our body with a certain level of carbohydrates, which includes sugar but also pasta, potatoes, and many other foods we enjoy eating.

If we strictly reduce carbohydrate intake the hormone is triggered to begin using whatever fat we have available and burn that as energy. Thus we don't tend to put on any additional fat when we are eating high protein/fatty foods. Not high carbohydrate foods cooked in fat like donuts or french fries mind you. Blubber, like the Eskimos ate, is true fat, plus all the actual animal meat. And they never gained weight or had all the health problems we "modern" folks suffer from.

The problem is that a low carbohydrate diet, which can be very balanced once we get serious about it, is also rather boring to many people. The sugars/carbohydrates gives us a "rush" at first, then actually act like a mood controller and help us deal with emotional matters that have been bothering us. But we have to keep doing it, consuming the carbohydrates, to maintain the feelings we desire. I think that's what's behind it all, using carbohydrates to self medicate, even though they create more fat within our body structure. That's why I refer to it as a food addiction, since it goes way beyond just taking in what we need to fuel our daily calory needs.

-- Anonymous, August 09, 2001


Gordon. Very good reasoning, I agree with what you have said, although the opinion has changed about ketosis, and it's not considered dangerous. According to one source I have read the only people that should be wary of ketosis are Type 1 diabetics. Insulin and glucagen are the two hormones that keep us just right, one stores fat and one burns it. I also agree that we need a certain amount of carbohydrate, but it varies with each individual.

-- Anonymous, August 09, 2001

Barbee,

You are right and have added a lot to the information. When I was doing the low carbohydrate diet I was using test strips I got from the drug store that measured ketosis level in your urine. The idea was to take your system into beginning ketosis and keep it there for as long as you wanted to drop weight. That indicated that the fat burning hormone was activated and doing its thing every day. I lost over 40 pounds in a couple of months doing that and I was eating *lots* of low carb food. It didn't seem to matter if I put in extra calories as long as I kept the carb intake below 20-25 grams per day.

As you say, ketosis is not a problem for the majority of people. In fact it's the natural result of a low carbohydrate intake and if you don't have any unusual medical problems before you start, you won't get into any serious medical problems doing the low carb diet. It has been speculated that when humans couldn't store fresh fruits we would build up our fat reserves during the summer and fall then start to use that fat during the winter when our carbohydrate levels dropped. Of course way back then we didn't even have refined sugar to screw us up. Only a few natural sweet products like honey were available. I made sure I had some good vitamins/minerals every day, and always included the vegetables that are low in carbohydrates.

A 14oz can of green beans is about 4 grams of carbohydrate. The same size can of corn is 20 grams. And a 12oz Coke is about 40 grams. Beef and other meats are zero grams. Same for oils, margarine, butter, or cheeses, zero grams or very close to zero if they are a pure product.

So by just watching the carb count and keeping it under 25 grams per day I was eating lots of food, never felt hungry, and lost weight every week. Of course, habit being what it is, I started missing those sweet treats like candy, cakes, ice cream, etc. And that's where the problem is, as I said, in getting used to a severe reduction of the high carb stuff I had become addicted to. I was even making artificially sweetened Jello for desert and I found it to be OK. But, if I put a serving of zero carb Jello in one bowl and the regular sugar sweetened in another bowl and had any kid try the two they would immediately go for the sugared one. They "tasted" the difference immediately, and didn't want the zero carb stuff. That's the way most people are about food, especially deserts. Sugar is very addictive.

-- Anonymous, August 09, 2001


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