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Jones is Suing to Get
Her Job and Reputation Back
By Stephanie
Armour, USA TODAY
In February of last
year, flight attendant Julia Jones had just landed in Denver when
she was met at the gate by three grim-faced supervisors.
They'd come to tell
her she was being fired, she says. The reason? Jones had earlier
taken a random drug test, and she says she was told results showed
she'd tried to cheat by substituting her sample with something else.
Jones, 42, of
Littleton, Colo., says she was dumbstruck. She says she doesn't use
drugs and never cheated.
In a lawsuit that
illustrates just how fierce the debate about drug testing has
become, Jones is suing to get her job back and reputation restored.
"I've had no job
for 16 months, I've spent $22,000 on an attorney, our house is in
foreclosure, and hopefully, we'll be able to pay for our daughter's
college," she says. "It's appalling. You're going to see more people
come forward and stand up to this."
Her former
employer, Denver-based Frontier Airlines, declined to comment
because of the pending litigation. But as drug testing spreads and
labs develop new methods of detecting drugs, more people are
challenging the science and fairness behind the practice.
Employers maintain
that testing is accurate and increasingly necessary to lower injury
rates and absenteeism costs. But critics say the rise in testing has
cost too many wrongly-accused employees long-held careers. They say
newer testing methods are being adopted despite questions about
their accuracy. And they say millions are at risk. More than 65% of
major employers test for drugs today, according to the American
Management Association. That compares with about 20% in 1987.
"There are some
real problems," says Robert Morus, a Delta pilot and an executive
vice president of the Air Line Pilots Association. "Labs are doing
tests in the cheapest way possible and being cavalier in their
findings. People are being accused of a crime and losing their jobs.
Their lives are turned upside down."
Debate about drug
testing has raged for decades. But now a new aggressiveness is
taking hold.
Employees who say
they've been wrongly accused are filing lawsuits, and in some cases,
juries are awarding hundreds of thousands of dollars. Unions are
trying to block government regulations that would require more firms
to test for workers who try to cheat on drug tests.
Why employers test
for drug use
At the same time,
many employers are not backing down. They say tests are accurate,
procedures protect workers from false positives, and testing is
needed because drug use on the job is rampant.
At Home Depot,
signs in many of its stores alert prospective job candidates that
they can expect to be tested for drugs if they apply.
"You almost have to
do it for self defense. If you don't, you get everybody else's
risks," says Layne Thome, director of associate services at Home
Depot in Atlanta, adding that employers who don't test can be seen
as a haven for drug users. "On the job, people feel safer. Once we
began testing after accidents, we saw an immediate decrease in
workers' compensation claims."
And drug use is a
real threat. A 1997 study by the government's Substance Abuse &
Mental Health Services Administration, found the rate of illicit
drug use among full-time workers to be 7.7%.
Companies with
mandatory testing have found real upsides. According to the American
Management Association, some of the benefits reported include lower
accident rates, fewer disability claims and decreases in violence
and absenteeism.
"It's so necessary.
You can't be too safe in this industry when you have metal in the
sky," says Elise Eberwein, a spokeswoman at Frontier Airlines. "When
people buy your products and services, they're putting their life in
your hands, and this is one aspect of what you do to make sure your
industry is safer."
Labs' reliability
challenged
Many critics of
testing don't disagree that drug use is a threat. But they say
employees shouldn't be forced to submit to tests that may cause them
to lose their jobs when they've done nothing wrong.
Consider Yasuko
Ishikawa, whose case has recently become a cause célèbre among
drug-testing opponents. The Delta Air Lines flight attendant says
she was returning from Japan in 1999 when she was told to submit to
a random urine test. After being told tests showed her urine had
been tampered with, she was suspended and eventually fired.
"I was ashamed; I
was just panicking. I was accused of lying," says Ishikawa, of
Beaverton, Ore. "I don't even drink or smoke. I felt like a
criminal, like, 'What do I do with the rest of my life?' Who was
going to hire me? I decided I should make noise so I can protect
other people."
She says her offers
to take other blood tests or have her sample retested were declined.
She sued, and the Lenexa, Kan.-based LabOne that did her test was
found negligent. This month, a jury awarded Ishikawa $400,000; she's
been reinstated.
In a written
statement, LabOne officials said they "passed all government
inspections with highly acceptable ratings during the time period in
question." An appeal is under consideration.
"We regret that
this incident occurred," says Delta spokesman Russ Williams, adding
that the "court found that Delta acted properly."
But Ishikawa wasn't
alone. At least five people who had failed tests to verify their
urine hadn't been tampered with were offered their jobs back by
Delta due to doubts about the reliability of lab results.
New tests under
scrutiny
Critics of testing
have seized upon such cases as they step up their opposition to
newer forms and methods of testing.
One of their
targets: validity tests, which are tests done to be sure a urine
sample hasn't been adulterated or diluted to hide drug use. Critics
say the validity tests are too often inaccurate.
But opponents also
are setting their sights on other methods of testing. Products that
allow drug use to be detected in sweat by wearing a Band-Aid-like
device have been criticized as impractical and prone to false
positives from external contamination. On-site tests that give
employers instant results are catching on, but critics say those may
give too many false positives.
And testing hair
for drugs has been criticized on several fronts. In 1997, the
National Institute on Drug Abuse warned "there may be significant
ethnic bias in hair testing for cocaine." Critics say that's because
the test causes more positive readings for people with darker hair,
such as Asians and African-Americans.
Providers of the
test, however, reject those claims.
"We do an extensive
washing of hair (to prevent) external contamination," says Ray
Kubacki, president and CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based Psychemedics,
which provides hair-testing analysis. "And the darker-hair issue is
all baloney. There is no basis for that whatsoever. This is an
important tool for employers."
But critics say
labs are not foolproof.
The Department of
Health and Human Services inspected 61 federally certified labs
where validity testing is done. About 300 results at 30 labs were
canceled after they were found to be questionable.
Supporters say
that's a small number, since about 13 million specimens were
reviewed. But that risk is still unacceptable, according to some
union leaders who say the number of questionable tests may be far
higher.
"We believe it's in
the thousands," says Ray Lineweber, with the United Transportation
Union. "Employees have been at the mercy of these labs. It's a lot
worse than anybody wants to admit."
New testing
guidelines
The stakes are
getting higher. The government this year is expected to establish
mandatory guidelines that will require more employees to undergo
tests to be sure they haven't tampered with their urine samples.
The guidelines will
cover more than 8.3 million employees in the more than 650,000
businesses involved in interstate transportation.
Supporters say the
guidelines are needed to counter new products on the market that can
foil tests. They say precautions will be taken to guarantee results
are accurate and that no one is wrongly accused.
But until there's
more review of the science and a stronger way for workers to appeal
results, critics say there are no guarantees. And they say they have
no plans to back down from challenging the drug-testing industry.
Renee Sharpe
illustrates how far employees are willing to go in their quest to
take on testing. She says she was wrongly fired as a courier with
Federal Express after failing a test. To sue the hospital where she
left her urine sample for testing, she says she sold her all-terrain
vehicle and used the money to hire a lawyer.
The Pennsylvania
Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case.
"We have a very
well-respected occupational medicine program and feel very confident
that necessary and responsible procedures were followed," says Susan
Schantz, at St. Luke's Hospital in Bethlehem, Pa.
Sharpe tells a
different story.
"It's devastating,"
says Sharpe, who says she never used drugs.
"They didn't
believe me, but I knew I had done nothing wrong. It took me 3 years
to find (a similar job), because every time I applied somewhere, I
was asked why I left. I never thought this could happen to me."
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