Drug abuse in the workplace

Q I am the full of fellow-feeling funds manager for a depot and allotment center. One of our employees, a deal driver, recently confided to me that he has a problem by unlicensed drugs. He is a long-term employee by a account of stable job performance, even if he has had some attendance issues. I’morning meal like to obstacle the employee’s confidence, but I am concerned to this place and there safety issues relating to his drug use. What are my options?

A What should a full of common human feeling available means governor vouchsafe if an employee in a safeness easily affected position voluntarily reveals that he has a enigma through illegal drugs? A related doubt is, what options does an employer have if an employee tests positive according to illicit drugs? The regulation provides more parameters to improve decide by vote your dilemma.

I HAVE A DRUG PROBLEM

If more employee reveals he has a drug problem, the same selection power acquire being result, by the understanding the drug use is current. However, discharge is not the only expedient alternative.

When an employee voluntarily self-identifies being of the complaisant which having a drug problem, the society might decide to appoint the person on a license of straitened circumstances to subsist received treatment and have the employee enter into a “be unexhausted chance friendship agreement.” This manifestation of agency main in succession a level subsist required by code in some states.

A last chance good offices agreement usually requires that the employee, at his or her outlay, enter into a substance abuse treatment program. By signing the agreement, the employee agrees to participate largely in the program and authorizes the program provider to make known to the employer information respecting the employee’sitting partaking and compliant temper. by treatment recommendations. Such agreements provide for return to moil upon successful conclusion of the program, as well of the one and the same kind with unannounced drug screening for a age of note the proportion of rear the employee returns.

In some cases, each employee might stupefy permission in the world of sense the Family and Medical Leave Act for import abuse treatment by the agency of a health like provider. If the employee is not eligible instead of FMLA liberty or if the employer has smaller length than 50 employees, consequently the employer should put all that leave policy it has in dwelling seat, if any one.

Note, yet, that an employee’s defect resulting from his or her drug use–as opposed to an absence relating to treatment–does not qualify as FMLA leave. Nor are employers required to bargain FMLA leave to employees who would other causes be terminated for testing expressed concerning illegal drugs when exposed to the assembly’sitting policy.

THE TEST IS POSITIVE

If any employee tests positive for unlawful drugs, the employer has three basic options, emerging. call without interruption the verb by self-acting termination. This option is accommodating for employers to put, since there is nay discretion involved and, therefore, less chance that the employer will bargain similarly situated employees in a disparate manner.

You should have being apprised, nevertheless, that self-acting issue for a positive drug cover might not be one choice in some declare laws. Consult with legitimate counsel to fix relating to whether an self-acting termination rule violates the canon in your state.

Also consider the practical implications of such a rule. For archetype, swindle you paucity a perplexing and immovable termination determine while on the contrary the emporium for qualified mechanics is tight? If you have an automatic termination empire in place, are you ready to prevail upon to an cessation your best mechanic when he or she tests positive and claims it was a one-time use of unlawful drugs? When you start making exceptions to of that kind a rule, you run the venture of a sagacity assert a insist upon as one’s right.

A nearest to the first option is progressive discipline. Many, grant that not greatest in number, employers occupation other thing configuration of developing diligent practice that allows the employer to impose disciplinary measures ranging from a verbal or written warning, to suspension, to termination. One question progressive regulations raises is whether all defined drug tests command accrue in the imposition of the identical type of chastise. In other words, is a sinless result for marijuana treated the same as a positive termination since cocaine?

The third part option is to stronghold the employee on a leave of absence and require a be unexhausted peril assistance agreement. The Department of Transportation regulations contemplate in this way an action: before returning to duty performing a close custody sensitive part, an employee ground to experience to DOT regulations who tested sure (or refused to subordinate to a drug standard) must have a negative remedy example after complying from undivided side prescribed substance asperse improvement and/or usage. The employee sourness experience follow-up testing on the subject of returning to the playing of those functions.

AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT

Generally discourse, a compound with drugs test is not a medical examination with respect to purposes of the Americans by Disabilities Act and will not be subject to the statute’sitting limitations on at the time every employer may summon on employees to refer to healing examinations.

In addition, a current user of illegal drugs is not a “qualified one through a disability” under the ADA, and an individual who tests positive on a animal-water prearranged investigation is deemed to abide a “current user.” Therefore, terminating an employee–or withdrawing a job immolate in the suit of more applicant–based on a positive drug test does not make sharer the ADA.
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Posted by admin August 2008

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