Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 4, 1994 TAG: 9402040097
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The tests, which will begin next year, will cost the industry $200 million annually and will affect 7.4 million workers.
"We are working to ensure that when you board the subway or a plane, a train or a bus, those responsible for your safety will have strong incentives to be sober and fit for duty," said Pena, who was ordered to consider new rules in 1991 legislation.
The regulations order that alcohol tests - now required only after a railroad or maritime accident - be administered on a random basis, at the time of hiring, when a supervisor observes suspicious behavior and when suspended employees return to work after rehabilitation.
Drug testing already is required under those circumstances in some industries. But under the new regulations, the 3.6 million workers now subject to drug testing will more than double to embrace more categories of workers, including school-bus drivers, mass-transit operators, intrastate truckers and any worker with a commercial-driver license.
Unions and industry officials objected to the expanded regulations and argued that drug-testing programs so far have found minuscule use of drugs.
The regulations did include provisions that will ease random drug-testing requirements. The required number of random drug tests would be cut from 50 percent of the work force each year to 25 percent, as long as the number of positive tests in an industry remains below 1 percent.
Random alcohol tests would be somewhat less stringent than drug tests. If fewer than 0.5 percent of employees in an industry test positive for two years, required yearly random alcohol tests would fall to 10 percent of safety-sensitive employees.
All tests would be administered by companies rather than government.
The rules go into effect Jan. 1, 1995, for companies with 50 or more employees and the following year for smaller companies.
Unions and airline- and trucking-industry officials objected to the rules primarily because the required number of random drug tests was not cut to 10 percent, as they had suggested.
Only the railroad industry supported the rules. Edwin L. Harper, president of the Association of American Railroads, said railroads "applaud the concept" of easing testing requirements when an industry shows low levels of substance abuse.
"Secretary Pena has adopted a concept that railroads believe is the wave of the future for safety regulations in general," Harper said.
by CNB