The part about drugs being illegal is the key. Marriage problems are not illegal as stated, take alcohol
If an employee is drunk at work, he can be fired. He can even possibly be tested? However, if their is some sort of drug test to determine if a person drank alcohol sometime during the past month, that would be unaccepted since drinking is legal.

Drugs and alcohol are similar in that they adversely affect your job performance
Using either at work will get you fired
Testing upon someone suspected of being high/drunk is accepted for both

But random testing for drugs is testing for an illegal substance, Alcohol is legal and since it is so, you must now have that extra reason for suspecting it carrying over.

Archduke Russell John wrote:

Heck Tate wrote:Those aren't my exceptions. Those were a list of cases about which I was asking Tom. I explicitly stated above that I wasn't saying it was a slippery slope. I was asking why one line was any more or less reasonable than the reasonable suspicion one I was proposing. If it's wrong to draw my line, then what line would Tom propose? That was my question.

Ah, I understand. Well, the easy answer is that drug use is illegal while marital problems and mental health issues are not.

So then, is it reasonable for the employer to demand a look at his employees' home computer hard drives on a regular basis? After all, kiddie porn is illegal.

Does looking at kiddie porn have any effect on you while at work? If so, then I would suppose you are ok with the search if the employee works in a public safety related position. After all, you said that drug use has limited effects after use.

If the employer suspects the employee is a kiddie porn addict, he would be reported to the authorities but the employer has no right to inspect the home PC because it does not affect his job. It's got to be affecting your job and illegal both.
Kiddie porn, side "job" as a burglar, serial killer = illegal but not affecting ones job
Alcohol, late night tv watching, possibly even cheating on your spouse = affecting the job but not illegal
and there are ways to get around these but not by random testing.

This reminds me, I have a right to privacy of course but my employer can check my work computer and all my emails if they so desire. Some would argue about that as well wouldn't they?

bbauska wrote:Does looking at kiddie porn have any effect on you while at work?

Being arrested for possession of kiddie porn would certainly have an effect on your job performance. Not to mention the fact that some jobs involve regular contact with children.

If so, then I would suppose you are ok with the search if the employee works in a public safety related position.

Not unless the pervert's arrest is likely to cause a health or safety hazard.

Again, I am only in favour of requiring a drug test in two types of cases: 1. where drug use is likely to pose a significant health or safety concern, and 2. where the employer has some reasonable grounds for suspecting that the employee is (a) using and (b) likely to let that use interfere with his job.

Under my rationale, the employer may not ask for a look at your hard drive unless he has some reason to believe you're actually a pedophile. Under some of the other approaches I've seen outlined above (so far as I am able to determine at least) there are other people posting here who would be okay with random demands for home computer access as an example of the employer setting the "standards of employment".

The problem with your logic is an arrest affects ones wok performance, the act itself does not affect that performance. We agree more than disagree but I can't get beyond your condition,random testing is ok where safety is concerned.

Two problems there
1. You are agreeing ones performance IS adversely affected by drug use and some jobs are worthy of such testing while performance be damned for other jobs. If it affects ones job, then why can't it be tested for on any job an employer wants to pay for and yes, that cost is on the employer of course!
2. Still not answered, I gave plenty of examples of where the line could be / should be drawn, There is always another example and another reason to add yet another job and another. Those questions were conveniently ignored.

also, we had not stated this earlier, the cost is not exactly cheap, random testing would of course be on the employers dime and as such would be vastly limited for that reason alone not to mention all the private intrusion issues the employee feels and that results in possible poor employer/employee relations not to be taken for granted by the employer.

Heck Tate wrote:

bbauska wrote:Does looking at kiddie porn have any effect on you while at work?

Being arrested for possession of kiddie porn would certainly have an effect on your job performance.

Sorry but that is not even remotely close. The act of looking a kiddie porn doesn't impact work.

Heck Tate wrote:Not to mention the fact that some jobs involve regular contact with children.

Which is why most people who work with children from teachers to the people who officiate school sporting events must go through a criminal background check which includes a child abuse history search.

[

Heck Tate wrote:Again, I am only in favour of requiring a drug test in two types of cases: 1. where drug use is likely to pose a significant health or safety concern, and 2. where the employer has some reasonable grounds for suspecting that the employee is (a) using and (b) likely to let that use interfere with his job.

And that is the contrary position. You started with the statement that you agree with Sass whose position is that personal at-home drug use does not ever effect work performance. So under that position, there is no reason to test anybody because their drug use would never effect their work.

Now, if you want to modifiy your position that personal at-home drug use can effect your work performance, I would like you to admit that.

We had a long tradition of not using crimes against children as hypotheticals. I STRONGLY recommend that it stop being used in this discussion.

It was already dismissed as not being relevant so should probably not be used again. However, if it HAD been an example, I see nothing wrong with pointing something like that out. We need not make an entire topic about such crimes but if the example were pertinent, so be it.
...good for all it didn't quite fit?

Archduke Russell John wrote:You started with the statement that you agree with Sass whose position is that personal at-home drug use does not ever effect work performance. So under that position, there is no reason to test anybody because their drug use would never effect their work.

Now, if you want to modifiy your position that personal at-home drug use can effect your work performance, I would like you to admit that.

You seem to have a faulty recollection of my original post in this thread. (It's at the top of page 4, if you care to refresh your memory.)

trundle..

I think that the problem in this debate is that some want to deal in absolutes (gubmint should not get involved, drugs are bad, employers should have the rights, employees have a choice even if it that of Hobson...), while others are looking at a less absolutist position (in general it's none of an employer's business, but there are exceptions that we will consider). Well, that isn't the problem, it's that the absolutists are trying to view the other position as absolutist (and so finding an 'exception' is jumped on as a 'contradiction), and in the course of it are misrepresenting or at the very least misreading their words.

No, the "problem" is their is no absolute. If one agrees "this" job should be tested for, then they have a difficult time drawing a line between any other job, their is no good place to draw such a line as we can make valid arguments for just about any position. No misrepresentation or twisting of words. If one agrees that a cop should be tested and ONLY a cop, then what about a heavy machine operator? A school bus driver? It goes on and one and drawing a line is not so simple, especially since in agreeing SOME should be tested you are agreeing drugs affect ones performance and you are therefore saying drugs matter only for some. Performance being affected is no right for other employers to test for.

*Sigh* there's been some very shoddy logic on display in the few days since I was away from this thread, not to mention more than a little outright dishonesty. Like this:

You flat out subscribe to the position Sass has made, that private drug use has absolutely no effect on job performance and is therefore no business of the employer. If this is the case, why is an exception needed?

This is a gross misrepresentation of the point I made. I never said that private drug use has no effect on job performance, what I said was that in the vast majority of cases it has only a very marginal effect, if any. I stand by that. More to the point though, this wasn't the basis for my assertion that it isn't any business of the employer. It isn't any business of the employer because it's the private business of the employee, taking place outside of the workplace on his own time. Poor performance in the job is the business of an employer of course, but it should be tackled if/when it materialises not pre-emptively tested for by violating the privacy of the staff. The reason I make an exception for certain professions is in order to be balanced and reasonable, something some of the rest of you may like to consider from time to time. In general I believe that the law should favour the rights to privacy of individuals and protect them from being bullied into surrendering their privacy by employers, but in practice I recognise that the right to privacy is one right that must be balanced against others, so in certain circumstances privacy has to concede precedence to other concerns. I've also been quite clear about where the line is drawn and why.

As for the idea that because drugs are illegal they're in a completely different category to other forms of behaviour that an employer might want to go snooping for, this is nonsense. Employers are not responsible for law enforcement. They have no remit for that and neither do they have the authority to start going around investigating people to see if they're breaking the law. As such the legality or otherwise of drugs is an irrelevance to the discussion. In fact I believe Brad earlier in the thread suggested that employers should be forbidden from passing on the results of their tests to the police, which is somewhat bizarre because in effect he's advocating a system which makes employers complicit in covering up a crime. But of course he has to say that because if he doesn't then in effect he concedes that testing would be done on behalf of the government and so may be unconstitutional.

Heck Tate wrote:You seem to have a faulty recollection of my original post in this thread. (It's at the top of page 4, if you care to refresh your memory.)

No, I remember quite vividly your comment. It was

Heck Tate wrote:Sassenach wrote:
If they're not doing a job where drug use could have public safety implications then it's none of their employer's business.

That pretty much sums it up for me, with the slight addition that any employer should be permitted to dismiss an employee who has given demonstrable grounds for suspecting...

The problem is that Sass's reasoning for why it is none of a employer's business is that drug use not used on the job does not effect work performance. As an example of this, he used an anectdote of a total stoner friend who is a senior VP in some company. Well, since you don't give your own explanation of why it isn't any of the companies business, we must assume it is because of the same reasoning of Sass, whose comment you endorse?

If that is not the case, please elucidate. Please inform us of why personal drug use is not an employer's business.

Danivon wrote:I think that the problem in this debate is that some want to deal in absolutes

I disagree with this completely. I don't think any one of us has dealt in absolutes. If we dealt in the absolutist position on employer rights, then we would support of employers checking computer hard drives, etc. We draw lines just in different places. The problem is we don't understand where they are drawing the line because the reasoning doesn't make sense.

Sassenach wrote:I never said that private drug use has no effect on job performance, what I said was that in the vast majority of cases it has only a very marginal effect, if any.

Me Culpa's for misinterpreting. Thank you for the clarification.

Sassenach wrote: Poor performance in the job is the business of an employer of course, but it should be tackled if/when it materialises not pre-emptively tested for by violating the privacy of the staff.

So then my question is why should I, as the employer, have to deal with poor performance when it happens when I could have avoided the problem from the get go?

Also, understand that I am a huge fan of right to privacy when it comes to government intrusion. Because one has no real option against the Gov't. However, when it comes to a private company, the owners have the right to hire whom they choose. If the owner feels that drug use would effect worker productivity, I think it is reasonable they should be allowed to test for it.