Pubdate: Sat, 24 Nov 2012
Source: Calgary Herald (CN AB)
Copyright: 2012 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://www2.canada.com/calgaryherald/letters.html
Website: http://www.calgaryherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/66
Author: Amanda Stephenson
Page: E1

DRUG TESTING PITS PRIVACY AGAINST SAFETY

Judges to hear Suncor arguments

A three-judge Alberta Court of Appeal panel will next week hear from
Suncor Energy Inc. as the oilsands giant argues against an injunction
blocking its proposed random employee drug testing program.

Next month, the Supreme Court of Canada will hear the case of Irving
Pulp and Paper, a New Brunswick company whose plan to have its
employees submit to mandatory breathalyzer tests has been fought tooth
and nail by the same union that represents Suncor workers.

Both cases will be watched closely by employers, safety companies and
privacy experts, as the courts try to find a balance between safety on
the job and an individual's right to privacy.

Unlike the United States, where workplace drug tests are relatively
common, Canada has had little experience with randomly administered
onthe-job tests. But that could be about to change.

"Employers have to take action. They're responsible for maintaining a
safe work environment," says Pat Atkins, administrator of Alberta's
Drug and Alcohol Risk Reduction Pilot Project (DARRPP). "There are
problems in the oilsands related to alcohol and drugs ... and we think
it would be irresponsible for organizations not to take action, given
the concerns they're seeing."

Those concerns range from drug paraphernalia found on work sites to
workplace accidents caused by drunk or stoned employees.

Suncor has stated three of the seven deaths that have occurred at its
Fort McMurray oilsands operation since 2000 involved workers under the
influence of alcohol or drugs.

"Every day that passes, the risk increases," Suncor lawyer Tom
Wakeling told the Alberta Court of Appeal last month. "The Suncor
workplace is inherently a dangerous space. The consequences of
mistakes in this hazardous environment may include
catastrophes."

Most oilsands companies already have some form of drug-testing policy
in place - in most cases, testing occurs after an accident takes
place, or if an employee exhibits behaviour that provides "just
cause." In some cases, employees must pass a drug test before being
hired for a certain position or before being contracted to work on a
certain job site.

DARRPP is different. The two-year pilot project, led by a working
group of oilsands industry employers and labour providers, aims to
introduce completely random drug testing in "safety sensitive"
positions at participating workplaces.

Organizers of the project point to U.S. data that indicates random
testing is more likely to catch workplace drug and alcohol problems
than incident-driven testing.

One of the first companies to get on board with DARRPP was Suncor,
which announced in June its plan to implement mandatory random drug
tests for safety sensitive employees at its oilsands facilities.
However, before Suncor could implement its proposal, a grievance was
filed by the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union. The
union, which represents 3,400 workers at the Suncor site, argued
random drug testing violates its members' right to privacy.

"This is about the right to preserve their bodily integrity, quite
frankly. Their privacy, their dignity," union lawyer Ritu Khullar told
the appeals court last month.

Days earlier, a Court of Queen's Bench Judge issued an injunction,
ruling Suncor cannot move ahead with its program until the union's
grievance can be reviewed by a labour arbitration board. Suncor
appealed, and that appeal is set to be heard on Wednesday.

The same union is also fighting Irving Pulp and Paper, the New
Brunswick company that introduced a workplace safety policy in 2006
that included random alcohol testing for employees. That case will be
heard by the Supreme Court of Canada in December.

Atkins said DARRPP is confident it is well within its legal
rights.

"We believe we have designed the project in such a way to respect
privacy and human rights," Atkins said.

Ed Secondiak, president of ECS Services - which has designed drug
testing programs for large and small corporations for 18 years - says
there are ways to ensure employees' rights are respected while still
reducing the risk of on-the-job substance abuse.

Secondiak said when he designs a program, all drug test results are
reviewed by a medical review officer. If a test comes back positive,
the medical review officer will speak privately to the employee in
question, and if he or she can provide a medical reason for why they
might have a drug in their system, they are given an all-clear without
their employer ever being informed of the original test results.

Test results are kept under lock and key with limited access, and are
never shared with outside agencies without the employee's permission.

Secondiak says in most cases, when a person fails a test, he or she is
sent for a substance abuse assessment. An addictions counsellor will
decide whether the individual can come back to work, or needs more
treatment. He said in many cases, being flagged by a workplace test is
exactly the push some addicts need to get treatment and turn their
lives around.

"I would say there's a high success rate when you're dealing with
alcohol and marijuana in terms of being able to bring people back (to
the job)," he says.

Dr. Charl Els, an addictions psychiatrist with the University of
Alberta, agrees substance abuse in the workplace is a serious issue.
Using U.S. statistics as a base - because there are no reliable
Canadian statistics - he estimates that 8.3 per cent of full-time
workers use illicit drugs. "We likely are only seeing the tip of the
iceberg in terms of the visible cases of substance use and abuse," Els
says. "It's well accepted that we underestimate the prevalence and the
actual impact."

Els also believes the nature of the oilsands industry means workers
there are more likely to use drugs.

"It's typically a young, male population, there's a lot of excess time
when they don't work, there's a lot of disposable income and cash in
the pocket. They're typically not with their families, they're
isolated. So there's a number of factors that make people more prone
to use," he says.

However, Els says random drug testing is the wrong approach. He says a
typical urine test only detects the presence of a substance in a
person's system - it can't detect whether the person is impaired. That
means it cannot differentiate between a person who smoked marijuana 20
minutes earlier and is stoned on the job versus a person who smoked a
joint at a weekend party three days ago.

"The vast majority of people who use cannabis instead of having a beer
on Friday evening may well test positive on Monday morning, and
without it remotely having any impact on workplace impairment or
occupational risk," Els says. "What they will detect is a whole lot of
normal, recreational users with no risk to the workplace. And that I
view as an invasion of privacy."

Els adds there are a lot of workers and professionals other than
oilsands employees who can be considered to be doing "safety specific"
work, and they aren't being subjected to random drug tests.

"You can imagine the uproar if I suggested tomorrow we need to start
testing all physicians for cannabis," he said. "By this logic, any
individual operating a vehicle for work should not be able to do so
unless they can test negative."

Els says he has no problem with post-accident or just cause workplace
drug testing, it's the random testing he opposes. He says there simply
isn't enough solid evidence that random drug testing reduces the rates
of workplace accidents, adding he too will be watching the Suncor case
and the Irving Pulp and Paper case with interest.

"I would be surprised if random testing will actually be cleared as
acceptable and not in violation," he says.
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