In your opinion, is random and/or mandatory drug testing in the workplace an invasion of privacy? Should employees be able to legally refuse and retain their jobs?

Obviously if you have a job like jet pilot or doctor or something like that, it WOULD be vital that you are clean for that kind of work, but to just work as a cashier or a waiter or a dishwasher, something that doesn't have the fate of a life hanging in the balance, I don't think it should be mandatory.

Shale wrote:

...confess my sins and get absolved. Sorta like the inquisition days.

I'd rather just lose my job than be absolved al la the Inquisition. Even if I confess, I'm still getting "fired"

I think jobs should have the option, but I don't agree with random drug testing. If an employee comes in and is obviously in some other mental zone, then I'm for the place pulling him or her aside and making them take a drug test....but if no one has given management any reason to do it, then it doesn't need to happen.

TOTALLY AGAINST IT!

Shale wrote:

Yes it is a big invasion of privacy. Of course it is legal for private companies to do it, because it is an agreement to work there. The gov't can't force it (except in case of liability for an accident) because it violates our right to "be secure in our person."

Still, I can go out and get drunk out of my mind and show up with a hangover but sober to work and it is OK. But, if I smoke some grass on the weekend and am not stoned after a few hours the THC still shows in the body and I could lose my job if tested. Or take the out - go to counseling (brainwashing) confess my sins and get absolved. Sorta like the inquisition days.

BTW, even if I didn't smoke and hung out with stoners, the THC would show up in a test.

It's that way at my job too. If you test positive, they won't fire you (necessarily) if you submit to going thru their lil 12 steps. I think its all bullshit tho. If someone is at work so under the influence that its affecting performance then either write them up or fire them. But I'm completely against random or entry drug tests. If I'm a recreational user and do it on my own time then that's my business.

I think that employers should have the right to do random drug testing. Drugs are illegal and it isn't fair to pick and choose which jobs are "important" enough to require it. I don't want my pilot high, but I also don't want the clerk at the market, counting my change, high either.

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What if he smoked dope at a party on the weekend and got tested on Monday, days after the high left. THC will still be in his system to be picked up by the test. Just a trace amount shows pos, so he should be fired for that?

Yes, he should be if he agreed to work for a company with that policy. Don't get me wrong, I don't hold anything against a person who smokes it. But, when it comes to an employer standpoint, I think that they should have the right to do random drug testing. If the employee is not agreeable he may go work elsewhere where no such policy exists.

Well, I look at this from having lived with a contractor for the last 12 years and have seen what he has gone through with having to find out employees were getting high in the morning before coming to work on his site. It is a mess.

Yeah, it does suck for the weekender who smokes on Saturday and then gets randomly tested on Monday...but if having that "not that easy to come by" job means something to him, he will pass it down on Saturday without taking a drag.