AJC.com > Opinion > Woman to Woman > Archives > 2007 > November > 03
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Should companies be doing random drug tests of office professionals?
Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, responds.
Rebuttal
Okay, let’s dispense with the scare tactics and deal with the real world. I know someone whose addiction to painkillers has denied him several jobs because the drugs show up during employment screening. These companies are well within their rights to deny him employment - so why wouldn’t they be within their rights to randomly test someone after employment? Surely drug use matters far more once an employee holds a piece of the company’s future in his hands!
The government often requires drug testing in positions affecting physical safety. But is that really all that matters? What about an equity analyst whose insightful reports affect whether your 401k tanks? What about the guy down the hall whose clear thinking avoids stupid corporate financial decisions? What about the sales woman whose revenue-generating ability affects whether you have a job next year? I honestly don’t think those people have the right to be totally “left alone.” They may not affect another person’s physical life, but they sure can affect their livelihood — and the life of the company.
And please. No-one thinks employees should go through a humiliating test every week. But well-controlled drug testing of randomly-selected employees a few times a year isn’t onerous, as long as the results are kept private and false positives are planned for and re-tested.
The stakes are bigger than people may realize. Department of Labor data shows that in 2005, nearly 20 million people in America - almost 7 percent of the population — were considered illicit drug users. And three in four had gainful employment at the time! This does not even include alcohol, which accounted for another 55 million workers who binged at least once within the last month of testing.
Verizon Wireless is one of many companies that both does random drug tests in safety-related positions, and screens office professionals when necessary. In a telephone interview, Verizon Wireless Executive Director for Public relations Sheryl Sellaway explained, “Drug and alcohol abuse pose a direct and significant threat to the goal of a productive and efficient working environment. At the end of the day, we are going to do business in the best way possible, and our drug testing process is not only to protect innocent bystanders on the street, but to protect Verizon also.”
Commentary
By Andrea Cornell Sarvady
Picture this: You come into the office each morning and take a urine test to determine if you’re engaging in any illegal activities, on or off the job.
Sounds like I’ve been smoking something? Well, such is the logic of zealots who would allow regular drug testing in any profession, for any reason whatsoever.
Substance abuse has deeply affected our country. Yet the solution isn’t to force workers to repeatedly prove their innocence in a far-from-reliable, humiliating procedure. Urine analysis can yield an estimated 10-30 percent false positive. Just as unnerving, it can reveal an employee’s treatment for depression or heart disease, or an existing pregnancy in its early stages. Does your boss have a right to know all that?
I have nothing against the 1989 Supreme Court case ruling that there is no privacy violation when “Employees subject to the tests discharge duties fraught with such risks of injury to others that even a momentary lapse of attention can have disastrous consequences….” As a retired pilot friend who agrees with the policy likes to say, “I was responsible for a lot of lives up there.”
Extra scrutiny is vital for firefighters, train conductors, and airline pilots. The rest of us are primarily responsible for the safety of others in one place — behind the wheel of our cars. Random check points on Saturday nights? Now that makes sense. Approximately 16,000 Americans are killed by drunk drivers every year; I lost a grandfather I never knew to such a crime.
Yet no amount of personal tragedy changes this: the right to a private life outside of work is no small thing in a free nation. While fighting the war on drugs, we should be careful not to wage war on what the late Justice Brandeis once called, “the right to be left alone…the right most valued by civilized men.”
Still think any battle plan is civilized enough, compared with the scourge of illegal drugs? Fine. Then you won’t mind if the airlines institute complete body cavity searches of every passenger, to determine just who might be smuggling drugs through our country.
After all, if you’ve got nothing to hide …