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WASHINGTON -- The Transportation Department unveiled rules intended to encourage more accurate drug testing of airline workers and other transportation employees and to ensure that workers have an opportunity to challenge results.

But the rules -- which cover 8.5 million transportation workers nationwide, from truckers to pipeline operators -- don't go as far as some union officials would like in defining the procedures companies must follow in administering drug tests.  The rules are also likely to draw fire from private drug-testing labs, whose trade group has slammed such proposals in the past as an attempted "public blacklisting" of the industry.

In October, the Department of Health and Human Services said it was launching inspections of all 65 federally certified drug-testing labs that test transportation workers after a case involving a Delta Air Lines pilot raised questions about how samples were validated at a lab in Kansas.  The airline initially fired the pilot and four flight attendants after LabOne Inc.  reported their urine samples had been "substituted." After the lab's findings were questioned by pilots-union leaders, the airline offered to reinstate the employees because of doubts about the results.

Transportation Department officials said the rules weren't related to the irregularities cited at LabOne or the Department of Health and Human Services inquiry.  They said the rules are an attempt to tighten standards in areas of the drug-testing industry that have been loosely regulated until now.

One department official noted that many employers started out running their own drug-testing programs in house.  "Now, many outsource [drug testing] to third-party providers, and the whole nature of the way the programs are administered has changed," the official said.  "There wasn't a whole lot written about what these persons should be doing."

Among other things, the new rules would give transportation workers greater opportunity to challenge "validity tests," in which companies test workers' urine samples for evidence of substitution or adulterants, substances that conceal drug use.  Currently, if workers fail a validity test, they can't demand a second test of the sample by an independent party; the new rules would allow them to do so.

The rules would also direct companies not to contract with drug labs that have violated federal drug-testing guidelines.  That provision has come under attack by the Substance Abuse Program Administrators Association, which represents drug labs and substance-abuse programs.  The organization, which didn't return calls seeking comment Thursday, has questioned whether the Transportation Department has the authority to impose such penalties.

Most of the new rules will take effect in August, although a few, such as the requirements on validity tests and penalties for companies that violate drug-testing rules, will take effect next month.

Robert Morus, a spokesman for the Airline Pilots Association, said the new safeguards don't guarantee that workers whose drug-test results are proved false will be able to clear their names.  He said some airline workers whose test results were later tossed out have been allowed to reapply for their old jobs, only to be placed on probation and accelerated drug-testing schedules when they returned.

The new rules are "a mixed bag," Capt.  Morus said.  "There are some good things, but they didn't settle all the issues.  ...  There's a serious crisis in the [drug-]testing business, and they seem to not want to reveal how serious it is."
 

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