I applaud Westin Hotels & Resorts for banning smoking. It’s about time a hotel chain takes a stand for health. Westin announced Dec. 5 that starting in January, it will ban smoking indoors and poolside at all of its 77 properties in North America and the Caribbean. It’s probably easier for an upscale chain like Westin to announce such a ban than for a midscale or budget brand; Westin clientele is likely more health-conscious to begin with. But I’d rather not stereotype. All I want to do is cheer. That Westin will fine violators by tacking on $200 to their bill puts teeth into the prohibition.

I don’t think the ban and its enforcement means Westin hotels will become enclaves of the righteous or that there will be smoke police in the lobbies. I think it means that Westin is deepening its health and wellness culture—a good thing.

Some argue that banning smoking violates the principle of freedom of assembly and steps on individual rights. Some probably still think smoking is all right; God knows it’s newly cool among the young, and Hollywood clings to its promotion of it as hip and chic. But former smokers, like me, and people who never smoked, know better. Clean air is a right, not a privilege.

One reason I don’t go to bars much anymore is that they allow smoking. That means that once I get home, I reek of smoke even though I haven’t touched a cigarette. Westin’s announcement means that beginning next year, all Westin hotels and resorts will have clean air and probably smell good. Health and wellness begin at home. Hats off to Westin for extending that winningly residential concept to the hotel.

In the old days—but not that long ago—labor unions used baseball bat-toting thugs to get recalcitrant employers to come to terms. Today’s union honchos—particularly those at hotel union UNITE HERE—are much more likely to think Madison Avenue rather than Louisville Slugger when it comes to fighting for its members. Ironically, perhaps, the results can be more damaging to hotel owners who don’t play ball.

Union strategists employ sophisticated media and marketing campaigns to sway their opponents and the public perception of their mission. Case in point involves the 30-month-old strike orchestrated by UNITE HERE against the Congress Hotel in Chicago. The 15,000-member local union recently placed large wall ads at O’Hare Airport to let travelers know that the Congress is under siege by the union. The ads, titled “Visiting Chicago? Don’t Be Left in the Dark,” quotes a guest at the hotel who didn’t know about the strike and found the conditions at the property to be less-than-outstanding. She says in the ad that she wouldn’t have booked a room at the Congress if she had been aware of the strike.

This tactic isn’t isolated to Chicago. The hotel union local in New York City recently waged a vigorous media and political campaign that forced the new owner of The Plaza Hotel to scale-back its plans to turn the property into a predominantly condo hotel. The unions have learned the power of the pen and understand that it can be more potent than the power of the baseball bat.