Is drug testing by companies in America mandatory? Does this breach your human rights?
by 
Ullyses
ANSWERS: 6
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Yes, for several reasons. mainly, liability. say, you own a company that refines gasoline. could you trust your employees, because of the dangers involved in refining gasoline, to be drug-free, on their own? i don't think so. and, i don't think your fellow workers would work with each other,for their own safety, without drug testing. not to mention the cost of insurance for workers injured on the job. This does not breach your human rights. its common sense. drugs are so plentiful and drug useage can be disguised by humans in so many ways, that........... The drug test is the only solution.
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No it isn't mandatory except in certain professions (commercial pilots, for instance). If a company has a drug testing policy they disclose it during the hiring process so that the prospective employee is aware of it before agreeing to employment, and therefore consents to the policy as a condition of employment (or that's how it is supposed to work). I once worked for a bank that tried to institute such a policy, and we were told by an attorney that in our state the company was perfectly within its rights to do so, but that isn't the case in all states. About 30 of us petitioned the Board of Directors, and the Board agreed with the employees! The company amended the new policy to state that there had to be probable cause before a drug test was administered. My current employer does not require drug testing.
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It does need to be disclosed prior to employment. In some cases they can force a drug test. We had a case at a warehouse I worked at where some racks were knocked over with a turret truck(15,000Lb forklift for narrow aisles), the insurance company wouldn't pay until the employee had a negative drug test. Where it is within there bounds to force a drug test. Had he refused, the company might have had to eat the losses in production to clean up and he certainly would have been, "let go".
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In addition to liability/insurance purposes, any recognized government supplier is required, by the terms of their GSA agreement, to maintain a "drug-free workplace", including pre-employment and for-cause testing of employees.
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A few years ago, following the creation of the Homeland Security Agency here in the states, a new law was passed by Congress. The so-called Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was a measure intended to protect the privacy of citizens' NPI (Non Public Information). At the time, I was the contracts manager for a consulting firm that did business with 22 of the top 100 banks in the United States. One off shoot of the GLB Act was for banks to go to extreme measures to protect their customer's NPI. As such, they required a number of things from their subcontractors, including drug testing. We were able to successfully negotiate to do our own in-house drug testing of employees, and were not required to share results with our clients. We used a "legal grey area" in the GLB act to demonstrate to the banks that the Act required testing, but did not specify details of the tests, or have a requirement to keep positively tested individuals from working at the banks. I must say, that in 2+ years of testing, I never found a positive result.
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Don't know if it's mandatory, but it breaches my human right because I got positive creatine level and lost my awaited job. But I never smoke anything in my whole life, don't even like beers or any alcohol/liquor. And, I am scared of needles. This world is messed up, and I'm now very upset. I just got unlucky and got dehydrated (guessed by my phamarcist) that day, and I gave away my urine then failed that stupid test. I hate drug test!
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