NYAspie wrote:
and get my drug screening.
Gah! Mandatory drug testing runs afoul of my ethical and sociological views. Hasn't anything been learned from the days when sexuality, religious views and skin colour were all grounds for dismissal (and sometimes illegal, for the first case)?
Interesting article on the subject:
http://www.stpt.usf.edu/hhl/papers/drug.testing.htmQuote:
Here's my suggestion. If a belief or activity is irrelevant to job performance, it is none of the employer's business. She cannot rightly prescribe or proscribe it, nor can she even inquire about it. If privacy is to mean anything it must mean at least that. The following example, I think, illustrates this principle. Suppose an employer wants to examine an employee's blood, not to detect illegal drugs, but to determine if she has elevated serum cholesterol. Anyone with elevated levels is given three months to lower her cholesterol to appropriate levels. If she fails, she is dismissed. Moreover, let us stipulate, what is likely true, that elevated cholesterol does not directly affect an employee's job performance. The employer recognizes that. She just refuses to retain people who are unhealthy. Under these circumstances such tests would be unreasonable and their unreasonableness would not be exhausted by the Fourth Amendment's prohibitions on unreasonable searches. In fact, as I argued earlier, it is doubtful whether the Fourth Amendment is directly relevant to the present inquiry.
Likewise, employers should not be able to control employees' behavior which, although marginally related to job performance, is primarily private. For instance, elevated serum cholesterol may be remotely relevant to job performance: People with elevated cholesterol are more likely to suffer heart attacks and die; the employer must subsequently train a replacement. That is expensive. Under such circumstances, permitting employers to specify an employee's serum cholesterol fails to draw an appropriate distinction between the public and the private. If testing were permissible under these circumstances, employers could also forbid their employees to smoke, drink, climb mountains, drive race cars and eat fried chicken -- or any other activity which might shorten their lives. That, however, would give employers extensive control over employees' private lives. And most assuredly that limits employees' privacy in ways which should horrify us.
_________________
Banned for discussing the recent spate of bannings.
22 May 2005, 5:18 pm
