Fat chance: It's not easy  for obese workers

Eve Tahmincioglu • Profile • E-mail

America’s TV boss Donald Trump, who has been in a war of words with Rosie O’Donnell, told Entertainment Tonight recently that: “If I were running 'The View," I’d fire Rosie. I’d look her right in that fat ugly face of hers and say, ‘Rosie, you're fired.’ ”

Let’s say Trump was indeed Rosie’s boss and phrased his firing just like that, could he be charged with workplace discrimination? If he had said, “I’d look her right in that Asian ugly face” or “black ugly face” the answer would be a no-brainer.

But when it comes to obesity discrimination, the rotund among us have few if any rights when it comes to being hired, fired or promoted.

Take Annette McConnell. Three years ago, she was working in sales for a company in Arizona and was tipping the scales at about 300 pounds. She was successful in her job, even winning awards, but she often felt friction when she interacted with her regional manager. At one point he suggested she stop eating dinner and just read books in the evening.

She began to suspect the manager was out for her and went to a lawyer to see if her boss had crossed the line, but the attorney told her there was nothing wrong legally with discriminating against weight.

Soon her worst fear came true. “I was told by this manager that they were going to lay me off because people don’t like buying from fat people. He told me straight up in my face,” she recalls.

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The workplace is becoming an increasingly harsh environment for overweight employees. Experts say more and more obese employees are feeling slighted by managers and co-workers. What’s causing the rise is unclear. Some say it could just be the increasing number of obese employees in the United States, while others speculate it may be a growing awareness of the problem and a rise in heavy workers speaking up about it.

Another factor fueling the fire could be corporate America’s stepped-up efforts to cut health-care costs by encouraging the rank and file to slim down, offering incentives to those who succeed. That leaves plump workers feeling demoralized and penalized financially if they can’t hop to it and hop off those extra pounds.

In a recent Yale University survey of about 2,000 overweight women, 53 percent of those polled said co-workers stigmatized them, and 43 percent said their employers stigmatized them. Being stigmatized translated into not being hired, being passed over for promotions, losing a job, or being teased or harassed because of their weight.

“Weight discrimination has been documented for decades, but more research is showing how prevalent it is in recent years,” says Rebecca Puhl, co-author of the survey and coordinator of weight stigma initiatives at Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.

And unfortunately it’s not just a perception. When it comes to the all-important wallet, heavy workers tend to make less than their thin counterparts.

Obese men and women can expect to earn on average anywhere from 1 to 6 percent less than normal weight employees, with heavy women being the biggest losers when it comes to their paychecks, according to a study by Tennessee State University economists Charles Baum and William Ford.

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