Workplace Drug Test Bill Shelved by Seymour

Anaheim Sen. John Seymour on Wednesday shelved his bill setting up guidelines for workplace drug and alcohol testing, ending a hostile Senate hearing during which the measure was denounced as unnecessary, “unconstitutional and un-American.”

Saying it was clear his bill faced defeat, Seymour, the Senate Republican caucus chairman, forestalled a vote of the Senate Industrial Relations Committee and asked instead that the volatile issue be studied at a series of public hearings after the Aug. 29 legislative recess.

Chairman Bill Greene (D-Los Angeles), an outspoken critic of the bill, readily agreed.

Greene said he suspects that workplace drug tests will eventually be found to be unconstitutional. He said employers already have the option of firing an employee whose job performance indicates that he or she is under the influence of alcohol or drugs while at work.

‘Whose Damn Business Is It?’

“If it isn’t affecting my work, whose damn business is it?” Greene asked.

The bill, adamantly opposed by civil libertarians and organized labor, was intended to encourage systematic and random testing for drug and alcohol misuse and to overturn a San Francisco ordinance which bans random drug tests. Seymour insisted that the San Francisco law actually “encourages drug abuse in the workplace.”

As the committee moved on to other matters, the debate on the controversial testing issue spilled into a Capitol corridor. In front of reporters and TV crews, supporters and opponents of the measure shouted at each other. San Francisco Supervisor Bill Maher touched off the fracas by declaring that a senator from Orange County, “somebody from the other end of the state . . . has no business” meddling in the affairs of San Francisco.

Wanted Statewide Law

Seymour, who walked away as the dispute continued, said he wants a statewide law on drug testing at the work site to head off legal challenges and also because many large companies fear that they may be forced by conflicting local ordinances to have inconsistent policies for their workers.

The bill would have subjected most workers to random drug tests annually. But an employee “who holds a job in which impairment . . . would present a safety hazard” could be tested up to three times a year. New employees could be required to take drug tests before being hired, and those who had previously tested positive could be tested at any time.

Seymour said many California employers--and 180 of the Fortune 500 companies in the United States--already have policies requiring their employees to submit to drug tests.

Although the American Civil Liberties Union and some legal scholars contend that random drug tests violate constitutional prohibitions against unwarranted searches and invasions of privacy, there have been no court cases on the testing issue in California, and existing statutes are silent on the subject.

‘In General Not Favorable’

Sen. Nicholas C. Petris (D-Oakland), another critic of the bill, held up a glass jar and challenged Seymour and his backers to produce urine samples. No one took him up on it, but Seymour challenged Petris to provide a sample.

Asked about Seymour’s bill during a press conference, Gov. George Deukmejian said he is “in general not favorable toward . . . an indiscriminate type of testing. But I’d like to see the bill in its final form.”

Seymour’s surprise withdrawal of the bill kept a room full opponents, including spokesmen for several labor unions and the ACLU, from having their say at the hearing.

Several backers of the measure, representing the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Manufacturers Assn., the California Trucking Assn. and the Southern Pacific Co., had testified before Seymour withdrew his bill.

Assembly Bill on Testing

Seymour said “four or five” hearings across the state will allow him to gather more information to answer concerns raised by senators Wednesday. He said the hearings, which could be joint sessions of several legislative committees, should definitely be held in San Francisco, where the first local law of its kind was passed last November, and in Orange County and the Silicon Valley, where several industries are affected by drug abuse problems.

Another bill on drug testing, pending in the Assembly, is scheduled to have its first legislative test during a hearing today before the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee. Although much less far reaching, that bill by Assemblyman Johan Klehs (D-San Leandro) is also expected to face significant opposition.

Klehs’ bill would require that any positive drug test be confirmed by an alternate testing method and that all laboratories conducting employee drug tests be licensed. It would also require that both public and private employers “reasonably accommodate” workers who want to enter drug or alcohol rehabilitation programs.