ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, May 26, 1996 TAG: 9605240031
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: health care
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY
The human-resources worker at one local company said he and another supervisor looked at a list of employees the other day and decided if the company screened all of them for drug use, it might lose half its 70-person work force.
That was one reason this guy was sitting next to me at the Roanoke Airport Mariott last Wednesday when Roanoke lawyer Clinton Morse led a workshop on establishing a drug-free workplace policy.
What happens when the unemployment rate hits almost zero - as is nearly the case in the Roanoke Valley - is that companies that quit testing prospective employees "get all the drug users," Morse said. The metro area's jobless rate stood at 2.4 percent of the work force in March, the latest available statistic. Analysts generally regard unemployment rates below 5 percent as an indicator of full employment, meaning everyone who wants to work can find a job.
When a company first starts testing, the failure rate can be very high - 20 percent to 30 percent - but it goes down after the word gets out that the company won't hire people who flunk, he said.
A good drug-free workplace policy, enforced properly, will eventually clean up a company. But it should be a policy that helps employees overcome drug and alcohol abuse and not just a way to "find them and fire them," said Morse.
About 30 human-resources workers representing a dozen companies attended the session, which was sponsored by the Roanoke Drug & Alcohol Abuse Council.
Some of the companies represented had policies, but wanted to improve them; others were looking for help developing a policy. One was a trucking company that wanted to be certain it is complying with new federal transportation rules on drug testing of drivers.
Morse, who heads the labor and employment group at Flippin, Densmore, Morse, Rutherford and Jessee, says these are the elements of a good drug-free workplace program:
* It assures that an employee who confesses to an abuse problem and seeks help will not be punished for being honest.
* It clearly states what is not allowed, such as "a detectable presence of alcohol or illegal drugs," or "off-the-job abuse of illegal drugs which affects job performance," or "awareness of the adverse effects of some prescription drugs."
* It clearly states what actions can be taken if rules are broken (mandatory rehabilitation, dismissal, retesting, loss of pay).
* It includes an employee assistance program where a worker and his family can get help.
* It includes a pre-employment drug test.
* It includes required testing of employees in the case of accidents.
* It states the company's rights to inspect offices, lockers, an individual's effects and vehicles on the company premises.
And it might include random testing of employees.
Random testing is the only way to get drugs out of the workplace, Morse said. But it will cost - $12 to $30 per person - and companies need to be certain they have a fair way of selecting employees to be tested.
One system selects by Social Security number. A company Morse works with tested its vice president for operations three months in a row using this system. It also caught its heaviest drug user.
Morse does not recommend screening of all employees, however. Part of the reason is cost, but it is also bad for morale and it doesn't catch the worse drug problem, alcohol abuse. Workshop participants agreed that alcohol causes more accidents and production loss than illegal drugs.
Morse also said that no matter what kind of policy a company has, it won't work if the company doesn't train its first-line supervisors to report drug and alcohol problems.
He also cautioned the companies to treat salaried employees the same as hourly workers. He said he has been in offices and smelled liquor on supervisors but couldn't get the company to take action.
Even with doing everything, some companies will still be outsmarted. But so will some employees.
Cheating on urine tests by bringing in someone's else's specimen is getting tougher. Most testing sites now check the temperature of the urine to determine its freshness.
And if you still try to beat that, as a worker at one company did by pouring hot water over a bag of his girl friend's urine, you might get caught anyway.
A lab worker called the man's company to say he passed the drug test but that someone better tell him he was pregnant.
No joke, and no more job for him.
Any company that didn't send a representative to the program, but wants a copy of the sample policy Morse distributed, or wants to talk about a drug free workplace may call Gia Koehler at 776-6221.
Sandra Brown Kelly covers health and medicine at 981-3393, or outside the Roanoke Valley at (800) 346-1234, ext. 303, or at skelly2180@AOL.COM
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