DRUG TESTS ON WORKERS RULED RIGHTS VIOLATION

OTTAWA (CP) -- Random drug and alcohol testing of workers and pre-screening
of potential new staff have been ruled an abuse of human rights by the
federal watchdog.

A new policy announced Wednesday by the Canadian Human Rights Commission
says drug or alcohol dependence are disabilities and therefore workers with
those problems must be helped, not fired, by their boss.

"Employers, with very, very few exceptions, should not be testing
employees, or candidates for employment, for drugs," said commission
spokesperson Catherine Barratt.

If an employer wants to know whether one of his staff uses drugs or drinks
too much on the weekend, that means he "perceives that the use of those
substances is going to disable them from doing their job on Monday and
that's forbidden -- that's against the law."

The new rules, which took effect in late June, include a few exceptions
that permit testing for impairment.

If an employer has "strong reasonable cause" -- such as an accident -- to
suspect a worker in a safety-sensitive job like driving a truck or flying
an airplane is impaired, he can test the worker for alcohol in his system,
said Barratt.

But if the test is positive, the employer is then responsible to
"accommodate the needs" of that worker, including providing medical
testing, counselling and even reassignment to a job that doesn't affect safety.

Exemptions are also made for cross-border trucking companies, whose drivers
haul freight into the United States where they may have to submit to
testing before they are licensed there, she added.

However, if random tests south of the border reveal a problem, the employer
has the same responsibility to help the worker with his problem.

"We're not advocating putting people in danger, but there needs to be
support and rehabilitation and treatment that goes along with . . .
reassigning them temporarily to a position that is not safety-sensitive,"
said Barratt.

The new rules apply to workers in federally regulated industries, from
Canada's banks and insurance firms to the airlines, telecommunications
companies, railways, some mining and bus companies as well as national
media outlets.

They can also act as guidelines for other companies that aren't regulated
by Ottawa but want to devise policies that won't contravene the law, said
Barratt.

It was a legal ruling in 1999 by the Supreme Court of Canada involving
substance testing by an employer that led the federal human rights
commission to expand its previous policy.

That was followed by similar lower court rulings, including an Ontario
court decision involving a worker at Imperial Oil Ltd. who admitted to a
previous drug problem.

When his admission led to control board operator Martin Entrop being
reassigned, Entrop filed a human rights complaint alleging discrimination
because of a handicap.

And in 1998, the Federal Court of Canada ruled that a drug-testing policy
implemented by the Toronto-Dominion Bank to screen new hires was
discriminatory. The federal court said the bank's policy at that time could
discriminate against certain employees and wasn't sufficiently related to
job performance.

Generally, employee testing for drugs or alcohol hasn't been widespread in
Canada.

The federal commission received only four complaints last year from workers
who were asked to submit to tests, said Barratt. Over the previous decade,
only 60 complains were made.