AIR NZ DRUG TESTS 'DUBIOUS'

Air New Zealand's workforce drug-testing plans were yesterday attacked by a
former medical chief at the airline.

Dr David Black, one of the airline's two chief medical officers until 1997,
told the Employment Court yesterday that the drug-testing lacked proper
safeguards.

He acknowledged there may be a case for testing transport workers in
"safety critical" tasks.

He also accepted under cross-examination that these workers could include
aircraft engineers and that the alternative may put co-workers and airline
passengers at risk, despite his strong reservations about the reliability
of information from urine samples.

But Dr Black, who now lectures on and practices occupational medicine, said
testing other workers on health and safety grounds as a surrogate for
direct assessments by supervisors of impaired performance was far more dubious.

It would jeopardise a hard-earned climate of trust and respect between
managers and staff at the airline.

It implied mistrust between employer and employee, and was "a most
unhealthy basis for a relationship in an organisation in which safety is
paramount".

Dr Black was also scathing of plans to refer test results to
human-resources staff not bound by a medical code of ethics.

His concern extended to a lack of medical privilege covering a consent form
in which staff selected randomly for urine tests for five classes of drugs,
or breath tests for alcohol, would be asked to disclose any medication they
were taking.

The airline already conducts pre-employment testing but a proposal to
extend these to its 10,000 existing staff is under challenge by six unions
representing workers, including aircraft engineers and cabin crew, although
not pilots.

Chief Judge Tom Goddard is hearing the case in Auckland with Judges Graeme
Colgan and Barrie Travis.

Airline witnesses are due to start testifying today. The court will hear
submissions in December from the Council of Trade Unions, Business NZ and
the Privacy Commissioner about ground-breaking aspects of the case.

The five classes of target drugs include not only those which are illegal,
but some which Dr Black said had legitimate medical uses, with or without
prescriptions.

Many substances of potential concern, such as Prozac, would go undetected
by the proposed screening.

Despite his reservations about drug tests as indicators of impaired
performance, he agreed with Judge Travis that detecting illicit substances
could have an operational "utility" in an industry that depended on the
integrity of those working in it.

Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union secretary Andrew Little
dismissed a suggestion by airline lawyer Richard Fardell, QC, that random
testing would be an effective deterrent to illicit drug use, calling it a
lottery which some workers would resist "in any circumstance, to their
detriment".

He accused the airline of failing to comprehend the humiliation it would
cause, and called it an "insidious and hopelessly inadequate" form of
management which avoided dealing with impaired performance at the time of
greatest risk.