Workplace Intrusion
Gene Yasuda’s article “NISAT Answers Call for Drug Testing in the Workplace” (Nov. 9) is so laudatory in its tone that The Times missed a bet by not charging NISAT for the advertising. While it comes as no surprise that an article in the Business section should approach workplace drug testing from a management perspective, journalistic fairness dictates that you also present something from the viewpoint of the subjects (and sometimes victims) of this corporate urine fetish: the employees who are the targets of the testing.
Jeanne G. Trumble, chief of the workplace policy research branch of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, is quoted as saying that substance-abuse testing is not based on a “find ‘em and fire ‘em philosophy.” In fact, “find ‘em and fire ‘em” is a pretty exact description of the philosophy of many employers. While employee-assistance programs (EAPs) are sometimes used, most employer-developed drug and alcohol policies require employees to come forward and volunteer their drug-use sins to the employer, even in the absence of any on-the-job problem. In the absence of such a prior confession, employees found to be drug users are subject to summary termination.
This readiness to terminate employees is all the more onerous since, as the article itself points out, there is nothing which requires a laboratory to perform a truly reliable drug test. Commonly used tests, such as the EMIT urinalysis test, are notorious for their high percentage of “false positive” results.
True, a termination based on such a “false positive” may be challenged at an arbitration hearing. But only a small percentage of employees are covered by a union contract that requires an employer to submit to arbitration. The alternative? Filing suit for wrongful termination. But the California Supreme Court (Foley vs. Interactive Data) recently gutted the California law related to wrongful termination. And, in any case, pursuing a civil lawsuit to trial takes several years.
The ugly truth is that most employees terminated on the basis of workplace drug testing have no practical recourse at all--even if they are innocent. Labor law professionals consider termination on such a basis the industrial equivalent of capital punishment.
The deepest pitfall of drug testing is this: There is absolutely no drug test that can register actual impairment. Thus, any program that relies on urinalysis is scientifically unable to achieve its goal of eliminating on-the-job drug use. But urinalysis can reveal other information to an employer, such as whether an employee is taking heart medication, has a high cholesterol level or is pregnant.
Employees may be forced to reveal personal medical information about themselves under the pretext of drug testing. They have no say in who receives the information. They have no control of their urine sample after it leaves their bodies.
A system such as this is fraught with potential for breaches of medical confidentiality and the firing of employees who are not in “perfect health.”
MIKA SPENCER McCAMMON
THOMAS JEFFERS McCAMMON
San Diego
