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Got the Pink Slip? Drug
Testing has Become the Norm
By Marianne
Costantinou
Source: San
Francisco Chronicle
So, you're looking
for a job, one of the zillion workers who got the pink slip in
recent months since the boom went bust. Or you're a recent graduate,
about to get a full-time job for the first time. Or you're sick of
your old job - the place has gotten too corporate, management is
starting job evaluations or some other type of torture, you feel
unappreciated and underpaid - and you just want out.
So, you get your
resume polished, hustle up some references and head out into the
proverbial job market with your proverbial hat in hand. Better save
the other hand for forking over an all-too-real cup of urine. Yours.
Drug testing. It's
here and it's big.
"Drug testing is by
far the norm," says a proponent, Mark A. de Bernardo, head of the
Institute for a Drug-Free Workplace in Washington, D.C., a nonprofit
coalition of 120 major employers from across the country, and a
director of San Francisco's Littler Mendelson, an employment law
firm that claims to be the nation's biggest. "Anybody getting out of
high school and college or switching jobs should expect to be drug
tested."
"Many workers now
do it without thinking twice," says Ethan Nadelmann, head of the
Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation in New York City, which
advocates for drug policy reform, including an end to drug testing.
"In some respects, drug testing is rapidly becoming as much a
national tradition as mom and apple pie."
And if you don't
pass the drug test - no matter how smart you are, how hard- working,
how experienced, how fab your references, how downright likable you
are - you won't get the job.
That's true even
here in so-called Mellow California and the liberal Bay Area,
historically in the vanguard when it comes to drug experimentation
and tolerance, both culturally and legally. If anything, the U.S.
Supreme Court ruling in May that reaffirmed the illegality of pot -
even the medicinal marijuana that was championed in the state's
Proposition 215 - shows how strong the anti-drug sentiment still is
in the country.
Little wonder,
then, that drug testing has become part of the typical job
application, with millions of wannabe workers tested each year. Most
often it's a urine test, but even strands of hair, a few drops of
saliva, a vial of blood or a week's worth of sweat on a skin patch
are being demanded to check for drugs in your system, from pot to
the hard stuff.
The trend, now in
its 15th year, has spawned a $5.9 -billion industry in drug-testing
labs, a burgeoning underground economy in guerrilla counter-labs and
mom-and- pop Web sites that peddle products that swear to fake-out
the tests, some two-dozen state laws, and a slew of court cases
challenging the drug-test habit on privacy and Fourth Amendment
issues.
What happened?
One Cup at a Time
At first, only the
military did drug testing, and civilians were pretty much spared the
need to pee in a cup to impress the boss. But then along came
President Ronald Reagan and all that 1980s chatter to "Just Say No."
Middle America was snorting coke up the ying-yang, drug hysteria was
in full swing and the War on Drugs was turning into another Vietnam.
Enter Reagan's Executive Order 12564, which made drug abstinence -
on and off-duty - a condition of federal employment. Reagan's rule
set guidelines for drug-testing programs. The Pandora's Box was now
officially open. The war on drugs was gonna be fought on the home
front, in corporate bathrooms, one pee cup at a time.
It wasn't long
before everyone was jumping on the bandwagon. In 1988, Congress
passed the Drug Free Workplace Act, which said that any company that
wanted a lucrative federal contract had better test its workers for
drugs. States dangled similar carrots. A few years later, in 1991,
Congress got into the drug-testing act again, requiring drug tests -
including random tests - for anybody in safety-sensitive positions,
like airline pilots, truck drivers, train and bus conductors.
Meanwhile, the drug-testing craze spread into other sectors. School
athletes, welfare recipients, folks on probation or parole - the
kinds of people authority figures wanted to keep tabs on - were
suddenly being ordered to take drug tests to maintain their
privileges.
But by far, the
widest spread was in the private work sector, especially as a
condition of getting hired. In the first decade since Reagan's
order, drug testing was up 277 percent, says the American Civil
Liberties Union, which opposes the practice. Though top executives
typically get to bypass that step in the job interview, companies
that require drug testing usually require it of everyone else who
wants to work there, according to experts, whether blue- collar or
white-collar. That means assembly-line workers and secretaries.
Computer analysts and bankers. Salesclerks and even the guy bagging
groceries at the neighborhood supermarket.
These days,
companies that test for drugs are a who's who of big business in
every industry. General Motors tests for drugs. So does Bank of
America, at least sometimes. Intel. Wal-Mart. Anheuser-Busch.
Safeway. The San Francisco Chronicle. Home Depot and Ikea even have
signs on their doors trumpeting that they have a drug-free
workplace.
At first, drug
testing caused a stir, with civil rights advocates and labor unions
and editorials lambasting the perceived invasion of privacy.
Lawsuits led to court cases and, in some states, some legislative
curbs. In California, the State Supreme Court has frowned on drug
testing on current employees, either as random tests or as
requirements for job promotions. In 1986, San Francisco became the
nation's first city to ban random testing outright. But across the
state, including San Francisco, workers in safety-sensitive jobs
like transportation are still subjected to the random testing
required in the federal Department of Transportation guidelines. And
there's no statewide or city ban on testing prospective hires, the
belief being that the applicant has the freedom to choose not to
apply for the job.
But even with some
legal curbs, drug testing has still quietly mushroomed.
All told, 67
percent of the nation's largest companies test their employees or
applicants for drugs, according to a 2001 survey by the American
Management Association, a New York consulting firm that claims to
have 7,000 corporate clients representing one-fourth of the U.S.
workforce. And though the percentage of companies who test is down
from its peak - 81 percent in 1996 - it still means that each year,
millions of workers are giving more than just their best effort to
the job.
Poppy Bagels Not an
Excuse
The result is that
drug testing is big business. Just one drug-testing company,
SmithKline Beecham, now called GlaxoSmithKline, did 24 million drug
tests in a decade, from 1988 to 1998, according to the Chicago
Sun-Times.
Though one of the
nation's largest labs, they're hardly alone in what Standard &
Poor's values as a $5.9 billion industry. The Drug & Alcohol Testing
Industry Association (DATIA), based in Washington D.C., has 1,100
members, including drug labs, collection facilities and equipment
makers. And its membership roster, says its executive director,
Laura Norfolk, "is just the tip of the iceberg."
Two firms -
PharmChem, a giant urine-testing lab which was based in Menlo Park
until June, when it relocated to Texas, and Psychemedics, the
nation's leading hair-testing facility, based in Culver City (Los
Angeles County) - alone do $60 million in business.
Urine tests, the
most popular, cost an average of $20 to $25 per sample. Hair, the
latest fad because it can track a longer history of drug use, costs
about $50.
Even drug-test
opponents admit that the technology these days makes a false
positive reading rare. Gone are the days when a test positive for
heroin, for example, could theoretically be blamed on eating a
couple of poppy seed bagels.
At the minimum,
each sample is tested for what is called the Big Five: pot, cocaine
(including crack), methamphetamines (including its cousins,
amphetamines and Ecstasy), PCP (also known as angel dust), and
opiates (like heroin and morphine). Employers don't usually ask for
the sample to be tested for prescription drugs, drug labs say. They
also don't typically screen for alcohol or cigarette use, since they
are legal.
A urine test can
detect the residue, called metabolites, of hard-core drugs up to
about 72 hours after use, but heavy pot users are usually tagged
with the telltale THC chemical in their system for as much as three
to four weeks. That means pot users are more likely to get caught
than hard-core heroin or cocaine addicts.
With hair tests,
drug labs claim that the hair shafts of a 60-strand, 1.5- inch
sample that's snipped close to the scalp can trace drug use going
back three months. And in case the job applicant is bald or decides
to get a crew cut before the drug test, the hair can be snipped from
another part of the body. And that doesn't mean your knuckles.
Because false
positives can't be counted on, wannabe workers who do drugs try to
outfox the tests. The most common way is to quit the drugs cold
turkey as soon as they know they're facing a drug test, and then
drink gallons and gallons of water for days before the test, hoping
to flush the metabolites from their system. But many turn to a slew
of companies they find advertised in High Times magazine or on the
Internet. Each company claims to sell just the right product that
will come to the rescue and help land that job.
With hilarious
names and Web sites - www. urineluck.com, www.testingclean. com,
www.passyourdrugtest.com, www.ezklean.com - these companies sell
adulterants such as nitrites and bleach, diuretics, synthetic urine,
chemically treated shampoos, herbal concoctions and a slew of other
products.
Naturally, drug
testing labs pooh-pooh the saboteurs' claims. But that still doesn't
stop them from checking out High Times and scouring the Internet,
and buying the products to test them out in their labs - just in
case.
"You look at High
Times when you want to know what the other side's thinking," says
Ray Kelly, an Oakland forensic toxicologist who for seven years ran
the urine and hair testing lab at Associate Pathologists
Laboratories in Las Vegas. "In the chess game of drug testing, when
they make a move, we have to respond to a move."
"We change and
improve our formulas every six to 12 months to stay ahead of the
labs," says Kevin Pressler, marketing manager of Cincinnati's
urineluck. com, whose 10 products each sell for $32. "It's an
inevitable cat-and-mouse game."
Counter-labs like
urineluck.com have to keep changing their secret ingredients because
once the drug labs spot them, they test for the new chemicals. Alas
for the worker wannabe if adulterants or any sign of tampering is
found in the sample: Drug labs say they automatically mark the
sample as coming up positive for drugs - even if the only evidence
is the attempted camouflage.
Good for America
Against this
backdrop, two surveys suggest it's all much ado about nothing. For
starters, the National Academy of Sciences concluded in 1994, after
a three-year study, that there was no scientific evidence that drug
tests ensure safety and productivity on the job. Secondly, companies
who test for drugs seem to be going on blind faith that the tests
live up to their goals. In 1996, the American Management
Association, a pro-employer group, asked if companies had any
"statistical evidence" that drug tests had an effect on accidents,
illness, disability claims, theft or violence. Only 8 percent of the
companies with drug-testing programs had done any cost-benefit
analysis to see if their own programs worked.
One Silicon Valley
company that did follow up was Hewlett-Packard. The Palo Alto
computer and office equipment company tested applicants for a
decade, from 1990 till last year, says Randy Lane, a spokesman. But
so few applicants tested positive, he says, that the company dropped
the policy as not being worth the cost.
Hewlett-Packard
started drug testing because, says Lane, "Essentially, all of our
competitors were doing it."
That's a big reason
companies do adopt drug testing policies, says de Bernardo, and why
they should. Companies don't want drug abuser rejects, he says, who
couldn't get jobs elsewhere.
It's no surprise
that the folks whose business is drug testing claim that drug
testing is good for companies, good for workers, good for America.
"Employers have the
single most effective weapon in the war on drugs: the paycheck,"
says de Bernardo. "It's a ripple effect. It's a success story as far
as the community is concerned . We want a drug-free society."
But improving
society is not the major corporate agenda behind drug testing,
proponents admit. It's money. They claim that employee drug use
costs companies big money, in loss of productivity and safety, in
absenteeism, and in health and insurance costs, even when the drug
use is marijuana at home on the weekends. The danger of marijuana
use is that it's a gateway to harder drugs, says de Bernardo. Though
most pot users don't graduate to harder drugs, he says, folks don't
usually do heroin and cocaine without first doing pot.
"Some people don't
go through that gate, some do. ...For some people, it will progress
from Saturday night to midweek to more serious drugs," he says.
What's more, he and
others add, even marijuana use is illegal, and companies have the
right to know if an applicant or employee is engaged in illegal
activity.
"Any illegal drug
use is illegal" says Bill Thistle, general counsel for Psychemedics.
"I think an employer has the right to expect you not to engage in
felony behavior (even) on the weekend."
Actually, marijuana
use is a misdemeanor. And in San Francisco, District Terence
Hallinan has said repeatedly over the years that his office wouldn't
prosecute anyone for smoking pot.
Big Business as Big
Brother
On the flip side,
drug testing has sent groups involved in civil rights and drug
policy reform into a tizzy. To them, drug testing smacks of Big
Business posing as Big Brother poking around in private lives.
"There's no end to
that, the employer being a policeman," says Cliff Palefsky, a San
Francisco civil rights and employment lawyer who wrote the city's
ordinance banning random testing. "It's the most intrusive search,
to literally penetrate your body fluids, search your chemistry, and
determine what you have ingested."
If someone shows up
at work clearly stoned, then test that one person, he and other
drug-test opponents say. But don't suspect everyone by making
everyone get tested. That's like having cops search everyone's home
just in case there's a criminal - which goes to the heart of the
Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches, albeit
by government.
"Privacy is an
important issue. To us, it's fundamental," says Lewis Maltby, head
of the National Workrights Institute, a research and advocacy group
on workplace issues based in Princeton, N.J., and the former
director of the ACLU National Task Force on Civil Liberties in the
Workplace. "You don't search someone's body and personal life unless
you have some grounds to think they've done something wrong" .
"Has anyone ever
heard of reference checks? Wouldn't that tell you more about their
work habits than having them pee in a bottle?"
What's more,
opponents add, drug tests don't distinguish between the occasional
and the habitual user. A drug test shows only the residue of drugs
that have been taken in the past three days to a month, not which
drugs are actively in the person's system at the time of the test.
So if companies are worried about safety and productivity, says
Palefsky, they should be giving impairment tests - simple computer
video games that gauge such things as eye- hand coordination,
reflexes and concentration - each day they show up for work, not
drug tests before they get hired.
"Drug tests for
public safety is a fallacy," he says. "Impairment tests test for
safety."
Besides, drug test
opponents add, other personal problems can explain poor worker
performance: fatigue, marital woes, shaky finances, watching "I Love
Lucy" reruns at 3 a.m. - and hangovers from drinking. If employers
can check if workers are using drugs after hours, civil rights
advocates say, what other areas of personal lives can they
investigate?
Rules and
Procedures
Even toxicologists
and others involved in drug testing voice concern.
Janet Weiss, a
medical toxicologist at the University of California at San
Francisco who does drug-testing consultations for companies, the
courts and government agencies, says she's opposed to drug testing
in the workplace because "They don't do what they're supposed to
do." Studies haven't shown that testing improves productivity or
saves employers money, she says. And she finds drug testing
"demeaning."
"What it patently
means is that the employer doesn't want `the wrong element'
contaminating his/her workplace," she says, in an e-mail, "and you
have to 'prove' you are innocent of using drugs."
Carolina Da Valle
spent several years at a San Francisco medical clinic where job
applicants would go to give urine samples. Her job was to set up the
procedures for them to follow.
"I found it
dehumanizing and humiliating to witness individuals having to
urinate in a cup - knowing a nurse was standing an inch outside the
door and listening to every drop of urine fall into the cup..." she
says in an e-mail.
"The guilty ones
were easy to spot: very nervous, in a hurry, usually with an almost
ready-to-burst bladder due to excessive water drinking in the hopes
of passing a surely positive drug screen off as a negative one."
The procedures at
medical clinics and other collection facilities usually follow the
strict guidelines set up by the federal Department of
Transportation. Halle Weingarten, a forensic toxicologist who is one
of the owners of Independent Toxicology Services in San Jose, spent
19 years as the chief forensic toxicologist at the Santa Clara crime
lab. She says there are more rules and paperwork involved in
handling a cup of urine than just about any evidence that came
through her old police crime lab.
In drug testing,
the big concern is called Chain of Custody, she says, meaning that,
"You want to make sure the sample that's tested is the sample that
came from John Doe."
As soon as the
worker comes into her clinic, she checks their photo ID. A form is
filled out with five multicarbon copies, with the worker's name,
address, Social Security number, date, time and the name of the lab
technician, known officially as the Collector. The worker is asked
to remove his outer garments like jackets and coats, and leave his
bags outside the bathroom. He then follows her in, and washes his
hands in front of her. She next prepares the bathroom: she removes
the soap so it can't be added to the urine to adulterate it; she
tapes shut the water faucets and adds a blue chemical to the toilet
bowl so water can't be added to the urine to dilute it. She then
picks up a plastic opaque cup with a rim that's 3 inches wide. The
cup is sealed with a lid. She opens it in front of the worker, hands
him the cup, and warns him not to turn on the faucet or flush the
toilet until she gives him permission. The worker then goes into the
bathroom. She stands outside the door.
As soon as he comes
back out with the cup, now filled with urine, she checks the faucets
and toilet to make sure they haven't been used. She then checks the
outside of the cup. There is a thermometer strip on it that goes
from 90 to 100 degrees. The urine in the cup must be body
temperature. If it is, the thermometer strip has a brightly colored
spot. She checks for the spot, and notes it on the paperwork. Then,
as the worker bears witness, she transfers the urine into two vials
of about an ounce each. She adds a tamper- proof seal to each vial,
initials them, dates them and asks the worker to sign each one. The
vials then go in a sealed pouch, with the paperwork attached in an
outside pocket in case of spillage. The worker is now allowed to go
back in the bathroom to wash up and flush the toilet. Signed and
sealed, the package of vials need to be delivered overnight to a
drug testing lab like PharmChem or Psychemedics. The whole process
takes about 15 minutes.
Most who come in
seem resigned to it, she says.
"It's a fact of
life," she says. "It's the way things are."
A Matter of
Principle
Still, though
resigned, workers aren't exactly turning cartwheels about drug
tests. Drug users are understandably reluctant to take a drug test
and risk losing out on a job, especially in these days of massive
layoffs and hiring freezes. But even those who claim not to do drugs
say they're opposed to the test on principle.
Lowell Moorcroft,
an Oakland man who is in his 50s, says he was stunned recently when
asked to sign a document agreeing to be tested for drugs when he
applied for a data analyst job at a major HMO. It was the first time
he's been asked in 30 years of work. He refused to sign, he says,
because he was offended.
"It has nothing to
do with the job, which is intellectual, professional and sedentary,"
he says in an e-mail. "It is invasive, demeaning, inegalitarian (i.
e., are executives tested?)."
James Weissman, 44,
a computer programmer who lives in Mountain View, has been asked to
take a drug test only once in some 20-plus years and some 15 jobs.
The request was in 1991, for a small data analysis company. He was
out of work at the time and wanted the job, but he squawked when the
drug test requirement was sprung on him at the end of the job
interview. It was, he recalls, "Oh, one more thing," resume is
great, you're great, we just need you to pee in a cup.
"I said `You've got
to be kidding. I'm not operating heavy equipment here. I'm operating
a computer,' " Weissman told the job interviewer.
To Weissman, asking
him to pee in a cup was like the company telling him it didn't trust
him - even though he says he gave his word that he didn't do drugs.
Weissman demanded
to speak to the human resources director, hoping he could reason
with him. What he found most maddening about the conversation, he
says, was the director's inability to explain why the drug test was
required other than the fact that it was company policy. To
Weissman, it was like a parent telling a kid he had to do something
"Because."
"This was very
anti-worker," he says. "It was `We're going to impose an arbitrary
rule on you. And we're not going to take your word for it.' If one
person could justify it to me, no problem. But `Well, it's our
policy. `Well, look, it's written down here' is not enough of an
explanation. Why not bowel cavity inspections? You have to draw the
line. You do not intrude, period."
Still, Weissman
needed the job. He took the test, and the job.
"When push came to
shove, I conceded," he says.
Drug Free in a
Hurry
But for those who
do drugs, it's more than principle that's at stake. With a drug test
looming, it's a crash course to get clean.
Jason Everley, 30,
a San Francisco computer consultant, says in an e-mail he can't
count how many drug tests he's passed, given 72 hours' notice. His
secret: "Drink lots of water and eat like a bird for three days.
You'll end up pissing every relevant, detectable chemical out of
your system."
But for others, a
drug test means panic. With a urine test, metabolites for anything
but pot will usually flush out of the system within a few days of
abstinence, drug labs say. But with hair testing - the latest fad,
with Psychemedics claiming 2,000 clients - drug use is harder to
hide. Hair testing is controversial, with opponents claiming the
dark, coarse hair of African Americans and many ethnic groups gives
disproportionately high readings.
Many who face a
drug test turn to companies who pledge get-clean-quick products.
Urineluck.com not only sells Bake N Shake (at the test, pee in a
plastic bag, shake it up, pour it in the cup, leaving the telltale
drug toxins behind) and Urine Luck (a urine adulterant which zaps
the drugs in the cup), but offers a chat room for folks to gripe and
ask anxious questions. Other Web sites post what they say are
testimonials from working stiffs who owe their jobs to the company's
products.
High Times has a
hot line, started in 1989, that claims it's given 150,000 callers,
at $1.95 a minute, recorded advice on how to pass drug tests. Even
Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman got into the act, in his book titled
"Steal This Urine Test," with instructions on how to smuggle a
plastic bag into the testing bathroom to substitute "clean" urine.
Hoffman's trick
sounds a lot like The Whizzinator by Puck Technology, whose Web site
claims it was founded by ex-'60s types. Perhaps the most famous of
the guerrilla tactics, it's a $150 undergarment with a "bladder,"
heat pack and dehydrated synthetic urine. To get the fake piss in
the cup, there's a handy-dandy, 3.5 inch prosthetic penis that's
worn, the Web site says, "in front of your standard-issue" one and
that comes in your choice of white, Latino, black, tan or brown. For
women, the penis can be worn on the side to avoid the telltale
bulge.
Despite the humor
of such products, many Web sites profess sincerity. The folks at
passyourdrugtest.com describe themselves as "freedom fighters" who
believe in "people's rights to privacy" and that alternative
lifestyles have "little or nothing to do with contributions you can
make to work and society." To test their products - which include
the $169.99 Bi-Cleanse Complete hair- cleansing shampoo that claims
to get rid of toxins in hair shafts - the company says it flies
staff members to Amsterdam every five months to visit the smoke
shops, known as coffee shops, and get hard-core users to volunteer
to test the products. The products absolutely work, they assure
customers.
The drug labs love
to mock the products - even as they keep tabs on them.
"We purchase these
products to see what they are," says Thistle of Psychemedics. "It's
just nothing. Plain shampoo. Repackaged shampoo. Prell. Water. Most
of them are just rip-offs.
"Who's going to
complain? `Yeah, I was trying to beat the test and they ripped me
off.' ... We just get a chuckle out of it."
Companies Are
Bashful
Curiously,
companies in the corporate mainstream act as if they're being asked
to pee in public when queried about their testing policy. Hired
mouthpieces get all bashful, citing the indelicacy of discussing
their human resources policies with total strangers. It's just too
private.
Apple, the computer
company whose advertising campaign dares folks to Think Different,
declined to discuss the thinking behind their drug testing policy -
or even whether they had one.
"In general, we
just don't, you know, talk publicly about our human resources
policy. Publicly we talk about our products," Tamara Weil-Hearon, a
spokeswoman for the Cupertino company, says on a voice mail message.
"Unfortunately, we're not going to participate in the story."
Chiron, the biotech
giant that's quick to trumpet any success in its research labs, was
also demure about whether it turned the urine or hair of prospective
hires into lab experiments.
"We don't comment
on our human resources policies," says John Gallagher, the media
relations manager at the Emeryville facility. "That's our answer."
Martin Forrest, his
boss at Chiron, didn't return a call seeking additional comment.
Neither did Debra Lambert, national spokeswoman for Safeway food
stores, which is headquartered in Pleasanton. A woman answering her
phone - who identified herself as "just the messenger" - relayed
that yes, Safeway did do drug tests but that no, beyond that, any
explanation was nobody's business but Safeway's.
Meanwhile, EBay,
Oracle, Genentech, Advanced Micro Devices, Yahoo and Applied
Materials, to name the biggies, blew off the calls. Only Cisco
(doesn't test), Sun Microsystems (doesn't test), Intel (does test),
The San Francisco Chronicle (does test), Wells Fargo (doesn't test
in Bay Area, does in other cities), Bank of America (does test, but
only sometimes) and Hewlett- Packard (did test but stopped last
year) responded.
Cisco just says it
doesn't but didn't go into it in a voice mail message from Steve
Langdon, one of a flotilla of flaks at the San Jose networking
company. Sun Microsystems doesn't test, says spokeswoman Diane
Carlini, because it wouldn't jibe with the culture and self-image of
the Silicon Valley computer company.
No such self-image
worries at Intel. Tracy Koon, director of corporate affairs for the
Santa Clara chipmaker, says in an e-mail:
"Yes we do
pre-employment drug testing. The goal of the program is to bar the
habitual abuser of illegal drugs from the workplace. This is part of
our ongoing commitment to maintaining a drug-free workplace. We
began our program in 1992, in strict adherence to the fairness
standards set forth by the Department of Transportation."
Maintaining a
drug-free workplace is the thinking behind its testing of
applicants, says Adrianne Cabanatuan, the recruitment manager for
The San Francisco Chronicle, which has been testing most prospective
hires for at least a decade, and began testing wannabe reporters and
editors in June 1996. "We try to preserve a drug-free workplace,"
she says, "so that's one step toward it."
Meanwhile, Wells
Fargo bank feels it's able to maintain its goal of a drug- free
workplace without pre-employment testing in the Bay Area and most of
the rest of its realm. "For the most part, we don't have any
problems," says spokeswoman Donna Uchida. "If we do, we deal with it
on an individual basis." The company does test, however, in
Milwaukee and in Oregon, she says, where it's the norm among major
employers.
Its competitor,
Bank of America, also tests selectively. The company "reserves the
right to drug test but I'd hate to say we do it across the board,"
says spokeswoman Juliet Don. The decision on whether to drug test
the prospective hire is subjective, based on, she says,"the role and
responsibility of the associate."
Note: The
drug-testing industry is a multibillion dollar profit center. And a
giant weapon in the War on Drugs. So don't be surprised if you have
to pony up prior to your next job interview.
Marianne
Costantinou is a Magazine staff writer.
Source: San
Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Author: Marianne
Costantinou
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