| In the US it’s fairly common policy to have when the employee could present a liability issue, such as driving a company provided vehicle, or operating heavy/dangerous equipment. Drug tests are a “cover our ass” measure and also make getting rid of “that fucking guy” easier. In practice it varies heavily on how it’s implemented, generally a company isn’t really keen to spend the money and time on that shit until after they’ve been burned by incidents. - Could be once on hiring, then only if you really fuck up. This is what my company does. - Could be “random” testing that just so happens to “randomly” catch the obvious fuckwit who walked in after driving to work while probably blitzed and now wants to hop in a sprayer. - Could be genuinely random testing. I work in Agriculture, and my company provides me a work pickup truck (funny enough, my ATV in the back is my actual “work” vehicle if you consider time spent driving) along with fuel, which I can make reasonable personal use of. The tradeoff is they demand the ability to get notified of tickets/points added on my license, and if I start repeatedly getting speeding tickets and ignore the “hey, stop that shit” talk they give me, they’ll ultimately rescind the free vehicle they’ve provided me. Getting a DUI would very likely result in immediate termination. Which I consider fair enough If I worked a desk job and don’t have a situation where altered states of mind would present a massive danger to myself, others, and company equipment, then yeah drug tests can fuck right off. |
Very much so. An ex-coworker worked for a cardboard factory, attempted to unionize the workforce by providing lunches to workers during talk shops. He was taking liquid cannabis, had a doctors permission, script to get his medical card, only dosed enough for his aliment, and HR was aware.
Management had him take a urine analysis, supposedly workforce wide, of course failed due to the cannabis use, fired him the same day.
Never missed a day he scheduled, good guy.
Working for the city we do routine tests, especially CDL drivers, but from what I understand, they don't look for positive tests for cannabis, so I'm unsure if we're seeing a shift due to the legalization across nearly half the US, or they're specifically looking for opioids.
Just figured I'd share a perspective.