Scaled-Down Random Drug Testing Proposed : New Effort by Seymour Targets People in High-Risk, Safety-Related Jobs

Legislation giving employers the right to order random drug testing of workers--similar to a bill withdrawn a year ago in the face of heavy opposition--has been introduced in a scaled-back form that would permit such testing only for workers in high-risk or safety-related jobs, Anaheim Sen. John Seymour said Monday.

Seymour, the Senate Republican Caucus chairman, unveiled a two-bill package of legislation that would also authorize testing of all job applicants and testing employees when supervisors have reason to suspect that workers are doing their jobs under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

The bills, which do not mandate drug testing but spell out guidelines for implementing it, also establish rules under which workers would have to be notified of the possibility that they might be tested. The legislation also allows employees to protest the results of tests and obtain a second opinion from a licensed laboratory.

Current law is silent on the issue of drug testing in the workplace, a condition that has prompted employers and labor groups to “fly blind” as they establish drug-testing programs on a case-by-case basis, Seymour said at a Capitol news conference. Seymour said 26% of the Fortune 500 companies in the United States already have some form of drug testing in place.

“This is no longer a question of will there be drug testing in the workplace,” he added. “It’s how and under what conditions.”

Broader Legislation

Seymour introduced similar but much broader legislation in the last session of the Legislature. The bill, which would have authorized random testing of almost all public and private workers--not just those in sensitive jobs--was withdrawn under heavy opposition and later subjected to hearings around the state.

Seymour said those hearings and earlier opposition prompted him to add provisions giving workers the right to receive copies of the tests, to protest the results and to retake the test within 30 days. Seymour’s new bills also require laboratories to save positive-testing specimens for 90 days.

But the bills, which have broad support from employer and business groups, still allow random testing of workers in a “high-risk or safety-sensitive position,” a category which is not described further in the legislation and which Seymour said would be left to the courts to define. He said nuclear power plant workers, air traffic controllers, bus drivers and truck drivers hauling toxic wastes are among those he considers eligible for random testing without cause.

It was random testing that prompted groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the AFL-CIO to oppose last year’s bill. Representatives of both groups said Monday that they saw nothing in Seymour’s latest package that would change their positions. The ACLU opposes drug testing in any form.

‘Margin of Error’

“We’re against random drug testing, period,” said John F. Henning, a lobbyist for the California Labor Federation, an arm of the AFL-CIO. “It’s not an exact science yet. There’s a margin of error there that could destroy a person’s good name.”

But Seymour said he hopes that the opposition from such groups will be “less intense” than last year because of the changes he made. He said that recent research has left him with no doubts about the seriousness of the drug problem, particularly in Southern California.

“I am told that you can hardly go to a party in Orange County without going into the bathroom and seeing a line of coke on a mirror,” Seymour said.