Teamster Drug Program Runs Into Troubles

The Teamsters Union, which has launched a highly publicized anti-drug campaign with the help of actor Sylvester Stallone, has encountered lawsuits and dissent from its members over the drug-testing program it operates with the nation’s freight companies.

Internal Teamster memorandums obtained by The Times also reveal that Teamster health and safety officials have expressed serious concerns about the operation of the program.

On Oct. 28, Teamster President Jackie Presser and Stallone launched their anti-drug campaign at a well-attended press conference at the Century Plaza. Duke Zeller, the union’s director of communications, said Thursday that the Teamsters are preparing an anti-drug documentary narrated by Stallone, which it hopes to put into distribution in January.

On the Front Lines

Zeller said Stallone also is making 30-second public service commercials that the Teamsters hope to get aired on radio and television. He also said the union plans to provide written materials to the national PTA and other groups.

At the October press conference, Presser described the 1.6-million-member union as in the forefront of the war against drugs. He said the union has been involved in a successful drug-testing and rehabilitation program with the nation’s freight companies since 1984, before drug use in the workplace became the subject of widespread public concern.

The program directly affects about 200,000 Teamsters and provides that a union member can be tested for drugs under two sets of circumstances: one in conjunction with a biennial U.S. Transportation Department physical examination; the other when an employer has “probable suspicion” that an employee is under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

But Teamsters for a Democratic Union, an 8,000-member dissident group based in Detroit, asserts that the program is riddled with problems. The organization contends that a small but growing number of Teamsters have lost their jobs because of flaws in the program.

Lawsuits Filed

Teamsters in Los Angeles and Ohio have filed federal lawsuits against trucking companies and the union asserting that they were fired unfairly under the program. The members also charge that the union failed to adequately represent them in grievance hearings.

Earlier this week, two other Teamsters from Massachusetts and Michigan sued the union in federal district court in Washington, D.C., attempting to enjoin a new drug-testing program covering 23,000 Teamster car haulers on the grounds that the union violated federal labor law and the union’s constitution by implementing the program without giving members an opportunity to vote on it.

Although Presser told reporters that the union’s drug program with the freight companies features rehabilitation, not punishment, in fact, only Teamsters who voluntarily disclose that they have substance-abuse problems are eligible for rehabilitation programs. A Teamster who tests positive under the National Master Freight Agreement drug program can be fired with no attempt at rehabilitation, according to R. V. Durham, the Teamsters’ health and safety director.

111 Have Lost Jobs

Thus far, 111 Teamsters have lost their jobs as a result of failing or refusing to take drug tests, and 48 have been reinstated after they were initially fired, according to union figures filed in connection with the Los Angeles lawsuit.

Internal Teamster documents made available to The Times by Teamsters for a Democratic Union show that Durham and a union industrial hygienist expressed serious reservations to ranking union officials in 1984 and 1985 about problems with the program.

In July, 1985, Durham sent a memo to Jack Yager, director of the union’s Freight Division, urging him to suspend the program until union officers and industry representatives are trained in all facets of drug testing.

“We have a serious problem on our hands, and I would strongly recommend we give this matter priority attention,” Durham’s memo concluded.

A copy of the memo was sent to Presser.

Confirmation Missing

Durham acted after he had been informed by Suzanne V. Kossan, a Teamster industrial hygienist, that Dr. Richard Cohen, a medical adviser to the Teamsters, had told her of drivers who were “discharged without ‘scientific certainty’ based on an initial drug-screening test with no . . . confirmation.”

Standard drug-testing programs require confirmation of an initial positive test with tests of a different type.

In December, 1985, Kossan sent a memo to Yager repeating her concerns about confirmation testing.

Kossan also urged Yager to institute an educational program because of reports that “local union officials are unfamiliar with the testing procedures and thus not able to represent the employees well through the grievance process.”

In a telephone interview this week, Durham said the program has not been suspended as he recommended last year. But he said that some changes were made in March that took care of some of “the wrinkles” in the program.

Changes Cited

He said the union is no longer using some of the laboratories it had used previously and that procedures to ensure that urine and blood samples are properly handled have been improved. Durham said he thinks the problems involving confirmatory tests have also been corrected.

Durham said detailed explanatory brochures have been sent to the 300 Teamster locals covered by the program and that he has made frequent trips to Teamster locals to help explain the program.

The problems encountered in the Teamsters Union are similar to those faced by a number of U.S. corporations that have instituted drug-testing programs in the last two years.

As recently as August, however, the Teamsters were warned by a drug-testing consultant that the testing threshold for a positive marijuana finding was too low and suggested the possibility that people who had passively ingested the drug could test positive.

Passive Inhalation

The union stuck with its level of 30 nanograms, or 30 parts of tetrahydrocannibinol--the active ingredient in marijuana--per million parts of fluid. Durham said he believes 30 nanograms is sufficiently high to avoid against people testing positive as a result of passive inhalation.

The military and several companies, including Greyhound, use a 100-nanogram level. They earlier had set lower levels but raised them after becoming convinced that the possibility of erroneous test results would decrease by raising the cutoff levels.

Attorney Barbara Harvey, who represents some of the protesting Teamsters, and Steve Kindred, a spokesman for the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, both said they believe that a number of Teamsters have been fired unjustly as a result of the program.

Asked if there have been any unwarranted firings, Durham responded: “That’s the one question that will always trouble me. I hope and pray not. I guess when you’re dealing in such a complex area, the potential is always there, but I sure hope and pray not.”

But Durham defended the practice of firing first-time offenders.

‘Running a Risk’

“If you set up a program where no one gets fired the first time around, we’re running a risk of a person being out there on the road under the influence of drugs,” he said.

Harvey said the union could offer its members more protection without endangering the nation’s highways.

“What we’re proposing would take a driver off the road every bit as quickly as a discharge because the driver would go into a rehabilitation program,” she said.