Workplace drug testing has never been without controversy. Last year, two high-profile cases involving mandatory drug test in the workplace graced Canada’s courts, determining how far employers must go in screening workers for drug use. The companies that were at the center of legal battle were Irving Pulp and Paper in New Brunswick and Suncor Energy in Alberta.
Although the practice of drug testing workers is more prevalent in the United States than in Canada, the argument is often similar: the need for a safe workplace versus intrusion of privacy and human rights.
In the U.S., workplace drug testing began in the late 1980s when the Reagan administration implemented mandatory drug-testing for all safety-sensitive executive-level and civil-service Federal employees. In 1988, theDrug-Free Workplace Act was adopted which requires some federal contractors and all federal grantees to agree that they would provide drug-free workplaces as a precondition of receiving a contract or grant from a Federal agency. Even though the Act does not require drug testing, some federal agencies had established regulations that included the implementation of drug tests. In 1991, the Omnibus Transportation Employee Testing Act was introduced in the transportation industry. Since then, a considerable number of employers, including private businesses, have put a drug testing policy in place in an effort to provide workers a safe working environment and reduce rates of tardiness, absenteeism, high turnover, and drug-related accidents in the workplace.
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