Pubdate: Mon, 10 Apr 2000
Source: Texas Observer (TX)
Copyright: 2000 The Texas Observer
Contact:  307 West 7th Street, Austin, Texas 78701
Website: http://www.texasobserver.org/
Author: Lynn D. Gilbert

URINE MY WORKPLACE

The problem with employer-required urine tests is not just that they're an 
invasion of privacy, but also that they don't get at their rightful target, 
which is work-related functions such as seeing, hearing, speech clarity, 
alertness, reaction time, hand-eye coordination, manual dexterity, and 
decision-making.

Work-related functions can be affected by a number of factors besides those 
detectable in urine screens - for example, legal drugs, hunger, illness, 
fatigue, and emotional upset.

Even law-abiding employees can unwittingly be affected by such 
factors.  Today's long shifts (beyond eight hours) and heavy overtime are 
big contributors to on-the-job mistakes, including accidents. Expertise 
exists to identify and measure critical work capabilities and to test for 
them, for example by the use of work task simulations analogous to 
simulations used to train pilots.

In my view, people in safety-critical occupations, such as pilots; drivers 
of buses, trains (sic) and trucks; air-traffic controllers; patient-care 
personnel; and operators of cranes, forklifts, heavy equipment, and other 
hazardous machinery, can fairly be tested with such simulations or other 
scientifically-validated tests regularly and frequently.  For simple 
productivity, employers may test important work-related capabilities before 
hiring, so long as they test everyone uniformly.  And they can always 
directly measure productivity of existing employees to make sure everyone 
is keeping up; there is no need for drug tests.

Workers should be evaluated on what they do not what they ingest.  But it's 
a lot cheaper and less effort just to throw a urine test at the issue, isn't it?
- ---
MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart