Manufacturing
Legal liability for health and safety is the basis for further introduction of testing programmes. It is the employer's responsibility, or "duty of care", to ensure occupational safety and health. The tightening of corporate liability in a number of industries has increased testing for many organisations. For example, the government"s introduction of a "corporate manslaughter" bill makes company directors personally liable for preventable occupational accidents.
A further motivation cited by employers for Workplace Drug Testing (WDT) comes from a moral standpoint based on the illegality of drugs, or one based on a personal belief that drug use of any sort is morally wrong. Employers often maintain that testing is the only way to tell if an employee is using drugs. This separates the moral argument from the safety, business and prosecution arguments because it is directly associated with work performance.
Any drug consumed regularly will result in a built-up tolerance to that drug and users are very often able to function at levels of intake that "normal" people can not, particularly where alcohol is concerned. Usually no distinction is made between drug use and abuse in moral arguments. But while the lack of distinction may be appropriate for the moral stance, the consequences for the employee of a positive drug or alcohol test should be relevant to their drug use patterns. Every employee's work is relevant to the productivity of the organisation and moral concerns apply to all stakeholders in it.
Prevention or deterence
Increasingly, the aim of a drug and alcohol testing regime is prevention. This contrasts with the attitude in the 1980s when testing was predominantly used to detect and dismiss employees. Prevention and deterrence are relevant to both performance and moral arguments.
Reliable evidence that the deterrent approach works is difficult to produce but there are some indications that a WDT programme is an effective deterrent to drug use. For example the European Workplace Drug Testing Society (EWDTS, a pro-testing group) reports rather cautiously that where testing has been introduced, the percentage of positives seems to decrease with the years following the introduction of WDT. A major ethical consideration is that WDT affects privacy. National legislation is the same as that for searches, which requires the consent of the person concerned to be lawful. The question of consent is a thorny one. Most guidelines for WDT require that informed consent be obtained before testing. In the UK, failure to comply with drug testing which is included in an employment agreement can be interpreted as a disciplinary offence.
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DOs and DON'Ts Leaflet |
