Drug Testing Declines Among Private Employers, but
Testing
Industry is Ready to
Fight
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/171.html#testingdeclines"Don't
ask questions if you don't want to hear the answers," is
Eric Greenberg's
explanation of why employer drug-testing of
applicants and current employees
is on the decline. A tight job
market and an upsurge of job-seekers who
refuse to submit to pre-
employment testing are making big companies less
likely to do
drug testing, he told the Dallas Morning News.
Greenberg,
director of management studies for the American
Management Association
presided over that group's latest annual
survey of corporate testing
practices, conducted last summer
(
http://www.amanet.org/research/pdfs/medicl2.0.pdf).
According
to that survey, drug testing among "major US
corporations" has declined
steadily over the past four years,
from 81% in 1997 to 66% last
year.
"There has been a statistically significant decline in
testing,"
Greenberg told the Morning News. "It seems logical to
assume
that it comes, in part, because of concerns over recruitment
and
retention."
In a press release announcing its research results,
the
association's global human resources practice leader, Ellen
Bayer,
confirmed the decline in testing, but noted that more
companies are
monitoring employees for productivity and
compliance issues.
"The data
suggests that in today's tight labor market, employers
may be more concerned
with bottom line, on-the-job productivity
and compliance matters than with
actuarial issues, off-the-job
habits or potential medical
problems."
"AMA encourages companies to create testing programs that zero
in
on specific competencies and behaviors that are really important
for
day-to-day job performance," said Bayer.
Vail Resorts in Colorado is one
example of the trend. Last
summer, it announced it was ending
pre-employment drug testing at
its Breckenridge and Keystone ski areas.
Rick Smith, vice
president of human resources at Breckenridge, told the
Summit
Free Press (Breckinridge) the company spent about
$150,000
annually, but did not find significant drug use in the six
years
it used the pre-employment tests.
"We thought that money could
be better spent on guest services
training, more recruiting, advertising and
job fairs," Smith
said.
That's anathema to the Drug and Alcohol
Testing Industry
Association (DATIA), the leading lobbying organizing for the
drug
testing industry. For the last five years, it has
lobbied
Congress to broaden and deepen drug testing, barely bothering
to
hide its members' financial self-interest beneath the cloak of a
"drug
free workplace" campaign.
It helped persuade Congress last session to
create the Drug Free
Workplace Grants Program, administered by the Department
of
Labor, in 1998, and last year convinced Congress to increase
its
funding to $5 million annually through 2003. Aimed at
increasing
the use of employment drug testing among small businesses
by
providing tax incentives, the program stands to bring large
benefits to
drug testing corporations.
But the industry group isn't resting on its
laurels. A round-up
of the group's legislative agenda on its web site
promises that
"DATIA will continue to actively work with Congress to create
and
endorse new drug and alcohol testing legislation that could open
new
markets and change the way in which the drug and alcohol
testing industry
conducts business."
To that end, DATIA vows not only to pursue more
widespread
workplace drug testing, but also to work for expanded
testing
elsewhere and to criminalize efforts to defeat drug tests.
It
will lobby the new Congress to expand drug testing in schools,
says the
web site, and it will move against "adulterants,"
substances that are used to
mask evidence of drug use.
Complaining that "under federal law, no such
prohibitions exist,"
DATIA lauded laws in four states (Texas, Pennsylvania,
Nebraska,
and South Carolina) making it a crime to use adulterants to
beat
a drug test, and said it would work for such legislation at
the
federal level.
It also anounced a two-pronged strategy to combat
the use of
adulterants. First, DATIA recommended, its members
should
contact their state Attorneys General to complain about the
ease
with which adulterants have been purchased. They should
also,
said DATIA, contact Internet search engines, "informing them of
the
potential illegality of listing such sites."
Second, the trade
organization will lobby Capitol Hill to ban the
sale and use of
adulterants. It said it will do so through
"cooperative efforts" with
the Office of National Drug Control
Policy and various executive branch
departments.