Construction industry weighs drug testing.

• Position: Special Section: 1990 Associated General Contractors of Alaska Annual Conference

Construction Industry Weighs Drug Testing

The war on drugs has come to work, with drug testing od employees and applicants in federal jobs and private industry. A controversial practice, it is creating divisions that mark different views among those favoring or opposing.

The question of whether drug test violate the constitutional guarantee of privacy is still being debated in high courts acess the nation. But the courts have upheld federally mandated drug testing for five illegal drugs that may impair safety.

The Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988 was the first declaration of the war on drugs in the workplace. The act requires companies with two or more employees doing business in excess of $25,000 with the federal government to have a verifiable program that addresses substance abuse in the workplace. That means employees must be told the company has a policy against drug use on the job, told about the effects of drug use, and told where to get help if they have a problem. The act stops short of requiring drug testing.

The second volley fired in the workplace drug war was a federal mandate for drug testing in safety-sensitive jobs. The Department of Transportation this year finalized requirements for drug testing in six transportation industries: the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Railroad Administration, the United States Coast Guard, the Urban Mass TRansportation Administration, and the Research and Special Programs Administration.

A small number of firms in Alaska, including those in the state's construction industry, are adopting their own testing programs as well. Many of them are fashioned after DOT's program, largely because DOT's program has already been tested in court.

The DOT program consists of pre-employment testing, random testing of workers and for-cause testing after an accident. The DOT's rules are carefully designed to protect employee privacy and sample integrity. The program tests for marijuana, cocaine, opiates, amphetamines and phencyclidine (PCP).

The samples are first screened with an enzyme immunoassay test. If drugs show up, the sample is tested a second time using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. According to DOT statistics, more than 30,000 tests run under these guidelines never resulted in a false positive. As a final safeguard, the program requires a doctor to review all tests and talk to employees who test positive to see if there are modical reasons for the results.

Anchorage lawyer Paul Davis of Paul Davis and Associates counsels companies interested in setting up programs. "Our advice is they use the DOT model to work from. It's been tested in courts; the risks are not quite as much," Davis says. cBut every employer has to realize that...