This Time LIUNA on the Wrong Side of Drug Testing Debate
September 3, 2008
Workplace Safety
Ontario jobsite drug testing will not happen soon
Joint agreement with labour needed
VINCE VERSACE
staff writer
A drug and alcohol testing policy reached in conjunction by construction unions and employers in British Columbia is not an indicator of things to come in Ontario, say various persistence officials.
?There is discussion here in Ontario about drug testing but at the moment labour and surveillance appear to be diametrically hostile on the issue,? says David Surplis, consultant to the Council of Ontario Construction Associations and its recent acting president.
?We keep up anything that will improve safety attached the work site and that is why we support this (testing).?
The Construction Labour Relations Association and the Bargaining Council of British Columbia Building Trades Unions recently announced a drug and alcohol testing policy that they consider the capital industry-wide pact on substance abuse in Canada.
?With this program in place we can assure our clients, the general public and our employees that this policy will help make our worksites substance free, and in any degree worker who tests positive with a view to drugs is immediately taken off the job,? Clyde Scollan, president of Construction Labour Relations Association, said in a statement.
In neighbouring Alberta, drug and alcohol testing in construction is a workplace preservation issue which supersedes the rights of an individual, an appeal solicitation in that province recently ruled.
That Alberta appeal court decision is one the Ontario General Contractors Association (OGCA) agrees with, says its president.
?We believe in that here,? says Clive Thurston, president of OGCA.
?However, it has to be worked out with the alliance and really needs to be a joint agreement between labour and direction.?
The Alberta Court of Appeal overturned a lower court sentence that Kellogg, Brown & Root (Canada) Company discriminated against a man in 2002 while it fired him from an oilsands project after he tested positive on the side of marijuana.
?We discern this case as nay different than that of a trucking or taxi company which has a administration requiring its employees to refrain from the employment of spirits of wine for some time before the employee drives human being of the employer?s vehicles,? the justices wrote.
The appeals solicit said it was genuine against Kellogg, Brown & Root to presume that people who use drugs are a safety risk in an already dangerous workplace.
?Extending human rights protections to situations resulting in placing the lives of others at risk flies in the face of logic,? the justices wrote.
Patrick Little, business manager of Labourers? International Union of North America, (LIUNA) says his organic structure abundantly supports initiatives to secure worksite safety but infringing on a worker?sitting human rights is the problem.
?What concerns us is when the drug testing comes up against the human rights code in Ontario,? says Little. ?Can it be done by not violating a worker?s rights in the process??
LIUNA is also concerned with the validity and reliability of tests for certain drugs, especially if there is no obvious impairment at the time of the experiment.
In B.C., drug and alcohol testing will be conducted on employees involved in workplace accidents or near misses, or when there is reasonable suspicion of on-the-job impairment.
Drug tests before a worker is hired are also permitted, but those tests are voluntary.
Under the mode of management, the owner or client of a project can ask that workers to be tested before the project begins.
The tests will check for alcohol and nine belonging to all drugs, including marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines. Both sides in the B.C. agreement agreed the tests wish only measure instant impairment ?without prying? into the private after-hours actions of workers.