I’m not really a fan of “slippery slope” debates because the logic starts to spin out of control. This can be seen in anti-gay marriage posters who say things like “If we allow gay marriage then eventually people will be marrying children and horses! It’s a slippery slope!”
I don’t think that any poster has said that anyone, who breaks any law, ever in their lifetime, should be excluded from being able to work. What most posters are saying is that it’s not entirely unreasonable for employers to require drug testing for applicants.
In direct response to your questions, do I think any of them would be ok? No. But there is a very big difference in your proposed scenarios and that drug screening.
Your scenarios are a continual invasion of privacy during the term of employment, versus a drug test which is most primarily only a one time occurrence during the application process.
Not necessarily. Some companies have random testing. Others, and I worked at one of these, have mandatory tests whenever an accident requiring a visit to a doctor or ER (which I read as “would qualify for an insurance claim”) occurred regardless of whether or not the employee was at fault.
Anyway, let’s make those one time events, Mgalindo. The applicant only has to provide the browsing history once, allow a single search, or be monitored during a probationary period. Are you OK with those infringements on your privacy? What if it didn’t affect you directly? You didn’t have to give up your privacy but some of your fellow citizens did? OK or not OK?
The post I was replying to contained the following: “I really don’t see how an employer’s desire not to hire people who routinely engage in illegal activity is an attack on “freedom”, since my understanding was always that freedom does not entail a right to break the law.”
The freedom in question is the freedom of privacy and it’s not primarily lawbreakers who have that freedom invaded. Seeing how it is the opinion of many, apparently, that weeding out those who routinely break the law makes it worthwhile to invade the privacy of those who do not, I’m wondering where the cut off point might be. It seems off to me that posters on this message board are apparently A-OK with an employer wanting them to urinate in a jar while somebody watches but would tell the same employer “no” if they were asked for their Facebook password (not necessarily the exact same posters). One of the employers in that thread’s OP was a correctional facility that wanted to weed out applicants with gang affiliations. Sounds pretty “reasonable”, right?
In some case, I think drug testing is justified, like if the employee appears to be under the influence while at work or drugs are turning up missing, say, from a hospital pharmacy. However, I’m glad I no longer live in a country where random drug tests and screenings, which I consider unjust, are common and considered reasonable.
Of the last ten employers I’ve had, not one required random or regular testing. Nor have I known anyone subjected to regular testing whose job didn’t provide a particular need for it.
I realize this happens, but I would venture a guess it’s a small minority. I would prefer to keep the debate to what is the norm since the OP posited that citizens are regularly “violated in a degrading fashion.”
Often the tests are taken well before any fault is assigned and are a part of the investigation process. I’m sure if someone you care about was injured, or killed, in an accident you would want to know if someone involved was intoxicated at the time.
The other difference in your scenarios, that I should have mentioned in my response, is that your suggestions open up privacy issues far beyond what they can be ascertained from a urine sample. Someone searching my house is not just going to see my “illegal activities” but also my rather embarrassing (if not impressive) toenail collection.
Analyzing my urine doesn’t magically show my employer my high school yearbook photo. It also doesn’t provide any protected class information that would be found if my home was searched or my web browsing records were viewed.
I really don’t like the implication that I think that something is fine for others and not me. I don’t think I’ve implied anywhere in my posts that I think rules shouldn’t apply to me.
I’m not going to speculate on the intentions of any single poster, but I doubt the intention was “weed out all people who have ever broken any law, ever.”
Further, I don’t see how one poster translates to “the opinion of many”.
No, it doesn’t sound reasonable and it’s a bad analogy. As posters in that thread have already noted, social media profiles often contain protected information.
From what I’ve read, most HR experts advise employers to avoid the temptation to even look at public profiles because it could inadvertently expose them to protected information.
Does anyone have any studies showing which fields or salary levels or in any other way accounts for how many employers, and which ones, require drug testing? There seems to be a lot of posters taking their own experiences as “the normal way of doing things,” but obviously we have a wide range of experiences.
So let’s step back a second: anyone know what percentage of jobs require a drug screen, and which jobs those tend to be?
If all we have is anecdotes, here’s mine: Minimum wage waitress/cashier: pee test before hire, subject to random and for cause pee tests in the future. Blockbuster Video: hair strand test before hire, subject to random and for cause pee tests in the future. (they dropped the hair strand and went to all pee tests few years later because it was too expensive; I know for a fact it didn’t catch all the users, either.) Slightly better than minimum wage teen dance club counter girl: pee test before hire, subject to random and for cause pee tests in the future. Privately run alt medicine clinic/private college administrator, $30,000 a year: no drug test - also the only job I’ve ever had w/ health insurance. Nursing student: 9 panel pee test every semester, results submitted to each clinical site, subject to random and for cause pee tests in the future. RN, home health care agency: pee test before employment, subject to random and for cause urine or hair tests in the future.
In amongst all that, a lot of time babysitting/nannying/running children’s events and birthday parties privately. No one has ever asked me to pee in a cup before watching their kids.
*A 2006 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 84 percent of employers required new hires to pass drug screenings, and 39 percent randomly tested employees after they were hired. In addition, 73 percent tested workers when drug use was suspected and 58 percent required testing after accidents on the job.
*
I wouldn’t argue with these numbers, except that I think the 39% are companies who say they randomly test employees. I’m not sure that random testing is standard operating procedure within that 39%.
Of course certain fields are going to have different standards, nursing obviously appears to be an industry that tests more rigorously and frequently than others. Personally, I think nurses - who have access to a plethora of pharmaceuticals and are responsible for the well being of thousands of people per year - should be held to a higher standard.
As the owner of a small business, I do not care what my employees do on their time off. I have never considered drug testing. If someone does not do their job to my standards, well then they get fired. Regardless of why.
The last job I had before becoming self employed, I was hired via a headhunter. A week after hire, I found out that a pee test was required because of a government contract stipulation. The day this was mentioned, I went home. I would have never taken the job if I had been told up front about the drug test. After much back and forth, a “work around” was devised. If you are important enough to your employer, there are always “work arounds”.
b,c, d, with a helping of “e. innocent until proven guilty and protection against self-incrimination should apply to more than just the government; they should be social rights, too.”
Obviously, I got over it enough to quit smoking, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s okay. It just means I wanted the career more than the weed.
And thanks for finding that study. So it looks as though drug tests - or at least reserving the right to drug test - are indeed very widespread, and my experiences are not an anomaly.
As you mention nurses specifically, I’ll state that I think it’s important that nurses be monitored for diversion of drugs (painkillers, usually) and that any nurse who steals her patient’s pain meds should have her license suspended, put into a treatment program and then not allowed to work with pain meds unsupervised for a very, very long time. But I absolutely do not see the harm in recreational pot smoking, off hours, as long as you’re not on call. I’d rather see that happening than what happens now, which is a horrifying number of alcoholic nurses.
All of the above PLUS:
f) The tests are not 100% accurate or foolproof yet employers use them as if they were. In the end, I think they are used to filter undesirables. If the black guy (just as an example) fails he is out, with good evidence. If the white guy fails we can work around that or retest next week.
g) The things they test for are not just drugs that impair function, they test for drugs that are illegal. Is that really the job of employers? It’s their right to do it I guess but they aren’t stopping alcohol or prescription drug use on the job and those two problems are way bigger than pot smokers and a few crackheads on the job.
What about criminal background checks? Most crimes are committed on someone’s own time. Would you hire a rapist, murderer or thief simply because they were “not on the clock” at the time of the act?
BTW - I’m NOT comparing using marijuana use to rape or murder. And I’m actually for legalization.
I’m just wondering how far the theory goes that what you do on your own time is your own business.
I’ve never done a criminal background check on a job applicant. No, I would not want to hire a rapist, murderer, or thief. As far as I know I never have. But I certainly would hire someone who occasionally jaywalked, blasphemed, or smoked a joint.
Been there, done that, taken quite a few breathalyzer tests. If you don’t have an obvious impairment and never get injured or involved in an accident you still get pulled for randoms. If you blow .000 you work, if you blow anything else you get dropped off at home. .04 (the legal limit with a CDL) or higher, you get fired.
I work in a government hospital pharmacy, where it really is the business of our employers to know whether new hires might be likely to make off with the stock. Every single person here, from top to bottom, was required to take a urine drug test at hire. Our director of pharmacy did it too. It’s expected and has been for decades, and I haven’t heard anyone complain about it.
However, no further drug or alcohol tests were ever required or requested unless there was real suspicion, with evidence, of narcotic theft or obvious impairment.
One fellow showed up for his first day of work blazing drunk. When he denied it (we could all smell it on him) he was offered the chance to take a blood test, which was drawn on the spot, and which he spectacularly failed. He was escorted off the grounds by security.
Did we violate his right to be drunk at work, or did he violate his work contract by showing up that way?