CLEARING THE SMOKE

Making Workplace Drug-Free

Year-Old Partnership In Medina County Is Aimed At Adult Workers, Helps
Employers Clean Up Job Sites

MEDINA - Branch Roofing had a problem. The owners' first hint came when an
employee came into the office and said, ``You guys have a drug problem here
and my probation officer says I can't work here anymore.''

That's a pretty clear sign that something's wrong, said owner Carol Tatton,
especially when the company didn't even know the worker had a probation
officer.

But repeated calls and messages to the probation officer were never
answered. Neither were the company's suspicions.

Then a few months later, a sub-contractor called to tell Tatton that her
employees were smoking pot on job sites, though he wouldn't mention names.
Finally, the owner of a temp agency told Branch Roofing that, sorry, his
workers ``don't want to work for you. You guys have a drug problem.''

How could this be? After all, Tatton said, all the employees took drug
tests before they were hired.

As she was about to find out, she said, that wasn't enough.

On Tuesday, Tatton shared her company's story with about 30 other business
people, as part of the Medina County Drug-Free Workplace Partnership.

The partnership began about a year ago, when the board members of the
Medina County Drug Abuse Commission ``decided we had a big hole in our
anti-drug program if we didn't do this,'' said board member Paul Williams.

MCDAC was funding prevention programs in schools, treatment programs and
law enforcement agencies, but still, there was a whole segment of the
population -- adult workers -- who were being missed, said executive
director Chris Kalina.

After bringing in business leaders for focus groups, the partnership has
spent less than $5,000 to put together a handbook, telling businesses how
to start a drug-free workplace program, along with a resource list.

During Tuesday's workshop, Tatton was joined by two other speakers,
attorney Natalie Grubb and Kathy Kushner-Fischer of the Ohio Bureau of
Workers Compensation, which is offering discounts for businesses with a
drug-free workplace plan.

Tatton told the audience that making changes is not easy.

The first time the topic of random drug tests was mentioned to employees,
she said, ``the response we got was, `If you implement it, we're out the
door.'

``So that kind of scared us. We took a step back and said, maybe it's not
the right thing to do.''

But then the tips from the subcontractor, probation officer and temp agency
started coming in. Something had to be done about the employees.

``We decided,'' she said, ``that we were not going to let these people put
us out of business.''

So the company called a meeting, announced the random testing and brought
in a mobile testing lab. Of 19 employees, she said, only six passed.

Since making changes at Branch Roofing, Tatton said, absenteeism is down,
employees feel safer and there has been no time lost due to accidents in
'97, '98 or '99.

To John Hartman, though, all this talk of workplace drug testing is simply
a way for local and state governments to ``enforce prohibition of
marijuana, not improve the safety of the workforce.''

Hartman, president of the Northcoast Chapter of the National Organization
for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said if companies are worried about
on-the-job safety, they should be using computer-generated eye-hand
coordination tests. Drug testing, he said, is simply a way for companies to
pry into an employee's personal time and private conduct.

``In the case of the roofers,'' he said, ``as long as the roof doesn't leak
and it looks good, that's what matters. That's really the bottom line in
some of these cases.''

Not true, said Tatton. Knowing that employees are smoking pot on a roof or
behind the wheel of a company vehicle places a huge legal liability on the
employer.

But she said she has found that finding good drug-free employees is difficult.

In fact, the owner of a temp agency was furious when Branch Roofing refused
to use a worker who tested with a high blood-alcohol level.

``He was very upset and told me, `I'm not going to do business with you
anymore.' And I said, `You know what? If you're not going to provide me
with drug-free workers, I don't want to work with you either.' ''