Tag Archives: Drug Testing

Written Policies to Protect Your Business During the Opioids Epidemic

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With the current opioids epidemic raging across America, including in the Panhandle of Texas, employers are asking me if they can drug test current employees for prescription medications such as hydrocodone. Can a Texas employer try to prevent a workplace accident or death by testing when opiate use is suspected, or do you just have to hope that employee won’t hurt someone?

You have to consider the Americans with Disabilities Act when deciding if you are going to drug test your employees and how you should react to a positive test. The ADA protects an employee’s rights to lawfully take over-the-counter and prescription drugs to treat a disability.

However, the ADA doesn’t protect current substance abusers. So, since abuse of prescription drugs isn’t protected, how an opiate was obtained, how it is being taken, and if the employee is too impaired to work safely become crucial questions if your employee appears impaired.

Usually, I get a call from an employer about drug testing when an employee is falling asleep on the job, is slurring words, seems disoriented, has difficulty performing routine tasks, and/or is excessively absent, belligerent or erratic. At that point, drug testing may be appropriate, but I have to ask if the employer has laid the groundwork to do the drug testing and to respond appropriately to a positive test.

As with most employment law issues, you have to protect your business with well-written policies long before you are faced with an employee who appears to be high on Vicodin. Continue reading Written Policies to Protect Your Business During the Opioids Epidemic →

My Christmas Wishes for Employers

Attendence, Benefits, Drug Testing, Ethics, Forms and Policies, Personnel Policies, , , , , ,

It is that time of year when we are singing, “We wish you a Merry Christmas”. As an employment lawyer with 30 years of experience, I have some idea of what you as a business owner or manager are wishing this Christmas.

I know you work hard as a supervisor. Managing people every day isn’t an easy job, particularly if your employees do not have a willing attitude to try to be a good employee.

I hear from employers every day about the frustrations that you face as an employer. The average person who supervises employees spends at least 20% of her time just dealing with employee mistakes, complaints, emotions, negligence, etc., on top of trying to do all of her regular work.

So, for this Christmas, I have made a list of what I wish for you as a supervisor in terms of employees.

  • Employees who realize that the purpose of a business is to make a profit, and that requires that the employee actually be present to perform the work assigned. I recently had a matter involving an employee who was tardy repeatedly for things like a flat tire, a loose dog and “I forgot to set my alarm”, so that client meetings had to be cancelled and business was lost. I wish for you as a supervisor the employment of people who realize that these little issues chip away at a business’s profitability. Even a small company should provide a generous amount of vacation time, sick leave and holiday pay. But once an employee has used up his allotted paid time off, he needs to think seriously about getting back to work and being productive for you or the business may not be there to provide his paid vacation the next year.
  • Employees who can be trusted with the success of your business, as well as the company’s time, money, and equipment. Every year I see a number of business owners in the Panhandle lose significant amounts of money to employee embezzlement, lose equipment to employee negligence and lose profitability to employee laziness. Granted, the employer needs to have reasonable checks and balances in place to try to prevent these losses. But wouldn’t it be nice if all of your employees were the kind of people who had enough integrity to forego theft, enough caution to treat your property as theirs, and enough loyalty to go above and beyond the bare minimum effort.
  • Sober employees. Most business now drug-test when an employee is hired. This has resulted in a drop nationwide in pre-hire positive drug tests. But I still see injuries and damage done by substance-abusing employees after they have worked for the business for a while. My wish is that you don’t have to deal with those issues. You can help make my wish come true by actually requiring the occasional random drug and alcohol testing in your workplace, as well as testing immediately after any personal injury or property damage occurs at work that might have been caused by an impaired employee.
  • Employees who exercise verbal discretion. Employees who gossip, spread rumors, complain, speculate and backstab in an effort to make themselves look better simply don’t realize that respect is given to those who keep their negativity and rumor-mongering to themselves. It would be great if Santa could bring each of your employees the gift of discretion this year. As someone wise said, “Discretion is the ability to raise your eyebrow instead of your voice.”
  • Employees who appreciate feedback and even criticism because it makes them better at their job. I have often thought that the clearest sign of maturity in an employee is his ability to accept constructive criticism, or even better, to ask for it. So, I wish for you employees who know that wisdom comes from humility and accountability. You deserve those employees who are not afraid to find out if they made a mistake and to ask you the best course to avoid such mistakes in the future.
  • Employees who take pride in their work regardless of who gets the credit. “My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.” – Indira Ghandi. Enough said.

Such employees sound like a dream, like a Christmas wish, don’t they? But you probably know that the best way to cultivate such employees is to lead from the top down. You must be the type of leader whose character, work ethic, sobriety, discretion and integrity are unquestionable if that is the type employee you want to employ.

As I have said before in my blog posts: “You will get the employees you deserve if you are quick-tempered, unfair, dishonest, prejudiced, undependable, selfish or disloyal to your employees. Your values, good or bad, will set the standard for everyone you supervise.”

 

         

Holiday Party Precautions

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The holiday season is upon us and as employers, many of you will celebrate in that great American tradition: you will throw a big Christmas party for your employees, serve them alcohol and then turn them loose on an unsuspecting public.

Consider what could happen while the booze is freely flowing at your company holiday celebration: the alcohol emboldens a potential sexual harasser and he becomes an actual harasser of one of your staff, or a conflict between employees is fueled by alcohol and an actual physical confrontation erupt.

Another likely scenario is that your inebriated assistant gets into a car after you bought drinks at the holiday happy hour and runs down a pedestrian.

Whether the pedestrian could win a lawsuit is debatable. Back in 1987, the Texas Supreme Court said, “The risk and likelihood of injury from serving alcohol to an intoxicated person whom the licensee knows will probably drive a car is as readily foreseen as injury resulting from setting loose a live rattlesnake in a shopping mall.”

The general rule in Texas is, however, that a social host doesn’t incur liability for serving alcohol to a guest.  However, a plaintiffs’ lawyer would be happy to create new case law with a suit against an employer for encouraging an employee to get drunk at a company function and then taking no steps to protect the public from that employee on the way home.

You don’t want to be the one to provide the courts with the test case to see if an employer is responsible for its intoxicated employees. Even if you win at trial, you will lose the tens of thousands of dollars it costs to have an attorney defend the suit, you will waste valuable production time while in depositions or trial, and you and your employees will suffer a demoralizing emotional blow.

You also should be concerned about the effect that hosting a big drunken blow out will have on your ability to enforce your drug and alcohol policies at the office. This kind of inconsistency does not engender respect for you in your employees.

For the same reason, as the boss, you should watch your own drinking and behavior at any company function.

Your best decision is to honor your employees during the holidays with a party that is nonalcoholic. If you choose to serve alcohol, take a few reasonable precautions: Continue reading Holiday Party Precautions →

Why Drug Test Your Current Employees?

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As an employer, you should be committed to a drug-free and alcohol-free work environment that protects both your employees, your customers and the general public.

Drug testing your employees is an important component of that safety commitment. However, while many employers test before hiring an applicant, nearly two-thirds of employers never conduct a drug or alcohol test on current employees, according to a Society for Human Resources study in 2011.

When employers do test current employees for drugs, employees test positive about 4.2% of the time, according to the latest numbers from the annual Quest Diagnostics Drug Testing Index. That number is creeping up and is at its highest level since 2004.

Even if you are a small employer with only 25 employees, that still means that one of your current employees could test positive for drugs right now. What if that one person is the delivery driver, the heavy machinery operator, the EMT, the security guard or any other safety sensitive employee working for you? Are you willing to take a chance with the safety of your other employees and your customers?

That only 4.2% of employees test positive for drugs or alcohol is actually a little low considering how many people are actually addicted to those substances. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health in 2016 estimated that 8% of all Texans have a substance abuse disorder, with three-quarters of those Texans addicted to alcohol. The rest are hooked on marijuana, meth, heroin, cocaine and prescription opioids, in that order.

As a Texas employer, you don’t have to allow employees to be impaired at work. Continue reading Why Drug Test Your Current Employees? →

Painkiller Addiction is on the Rise with Employees

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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that nearly 2 million people in the United States are addicted to prescription pain killers. One of those people might be your employee.

Opioid painkillers such as Vicodin and Oxycontin that are hydrocodone and oxycodone based are commonly prescribed to treat work-place injuries and other types of chronic pain. But these drugs are often over-prescribed and abused by patients and addiction is very common. In fact, in the last ten years, painkiller addiction rates have risen to epidemic proportions in the United States, the CDC said.

Injured or chronically ill workers who develop an addiction to painkillers represent a health and safety concern to themselves and to fellow workers. They can also create potential liability risks for you, the employer, and can lead to a less efficient and less productive workforce.

An obvious first-step in dealing with any kind of drug problem in the workplace is to be proactive and have a drug-testing policy in place that allows pre-employment testing, random drug testing, testing after workplace accidents and testing based on reasonable suspicion.

Then train your managers to look for the signs of substance abuse, particularly in employees who slack off at work, take unusual and frequent breaks, are no longer punctual, and who occasionally slur their speech or make unwarranted mistakes in their work.  While many employees may be able to manage their chronic pain responsibly and without abuse, you should be aware of the warning signs of abuse and educate your managers on them as well. These signs can include bloodshot eyes, sudden weight loss, a lack of grooming, poor attendance or other uncharacteristic behavior.

Before you take action against an impaired employee, you need to consider and weigh both the safety of your employees versus the risk of a lawsuit by the employee who is abusing drugs. The Family and Medical Leave Act or the Americans with Disabilities Act may apply to this situation, so don’t make any hasty decisions without legal advice.

Employers Refuse to Recognize Rocky Mountain High

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Many of my Texas clients also have offices in Colorado. Since that state legalized the recreational use of marijuana in November, I’ve begun receiving questions from my clients with locations in Colorado about their workplace drug use and testing policies. They want to understand their rights in light of the legality of marijuana in that state.

Legalized marijuana should be no more difficult for employers to handle than alcohol. If an employee is drunk on the job, you as an employer have a right to test him and to fire him for reporting to work under the influence of alcohol. An employee who is high on marijuana at work presents the same issue. However, marijuana shows up on drug tests long after the body has processed and gotten rid of alcohol. In other words, an employer testing on Monday won’t know that the employee was drunk on Friday night.  But if the employee got stoned on Friday night, testing on Monday will reveal that fact. Employers are therefore concerned that they won’t be able to fire an employee who tests positive for marijuana use but can’t be proven to be high at work. This generates anxiety for safety-conscious businesses.

At this point in time in the Fall of 2012, marijuana is still illegal in the United States, and therefore in every state. Just because an employee isn’t in violation of Colorado state law by smoking weed, he is still in violation of federal law and can be in violation of the employer’s substance abuse policy if it is well-written. Therefore, as an employer, make sure your policy states that, along with being under the influence at work, the use, possession or sale of illegal drugs is prohibited, and illegal drugs should be defined as any drug that is illegal under municipal, state and/or federal laws.

The federal Department of Transportation announced in December 2012 that state legalization of recreational pot would not change the rules prohibiting marijuana use by employees in safety-sensitive positions such as truck drivers, pilots and school bus drivers. Therefore, explaining away a positive test for marijuana by saying it was used legally in Colorado will not be an acceptable excuse and will still subject truck drivers, for example, to suspension of driving duties. Employers can take the same approach by letting employees know that the employer’s safety requirements will not be affected by state laws legalizing marijuana and that employees will still be subject to discipline up to and including termination for any drug test that shows marijuana use.