DRUG-RECORD DRIVERS GET OK

Supreme Court says truck drivers with drug histories can get reinstated

WASHINGTON (AP) - Courts can enforce an arbitration award that requires an
employer to reinstate a truck driver who has twice tested positive for drug
use, the Supreme Court said Tuesday.

The justices ruled unanimously that a West Virginia coal company must
reinstate a truck driver who tested positive for marijuana use two times.
Under a union contract, the case had been submitted to an arbitrator who
decided the employee should be reinstated after serving a suspension and
undergoing drug treatment.The company, Eastern Associated Coal Corp., had
argued that the order must be overturned because it violated a public policy
against performing safety-sensitive jobs under the influence of illegal
drugs.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer, writing for the court, said the reinstatement
order "violates no specific provision of any law or regulation." Instead,
the justice said it followed federal Transportation Department rules
allowing employees to return to work after undergoing drug treatment.

"We recognize that reasonable people can differ as to whether reinstatement
or discharge is the more appropriate remedy here,'" Breyer wrote. "But both
employer and union have agreed to entrust this ... decision to an
arbitrator."

The case involves James Smith, who worked for Eastern in the Madison, W.Va.,
region as a member of a road crew, which required him to drive heavy
vehicles on public highways.

In 1996 he tested positive for marijuana. Eastern sought to fire him but an
arbitrator ordered him reinstated after serving a 30-day suspension and
participating in drug treatment and random tests.

Smith passed four random drug tests but in 1997 he again tested positive for
marijuana. Eastern tried to fire him again, but the arbitrator ordered the
company to take him back after a new suspension of just more than three
months, plus drug treatment and random tests.

Eastern asked a federal judge to overturn the reinstatement, raising the
public policy argument. A federal judge and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals ruled against him, and on Tuesday the Supreme Court agreed.

Breyer said a federal law requiring testing of transportation employees
provides for rehabilitation of those who test positive. Further, he said
labor law policy favors resolving disciplinary issues through arbitration if
labor and management have agreed to do so.

The order to reinstate Smith "does not condone Smith's conduct or ignore the
risk to public safety that drug use by truck drivers may pose," Breyer
wrote.

His opinion was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices
John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter
and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote separately to agree on somewhat different
grounds that Smith should be reinstated, and Justice Clarence Thomas joined
his opinion.

The case is Eastern Associated Coal Corp. v. United Mine Workers of America,
99-1038.