An analysis of the drug testing decision

Two separate investigations were undertaken to better understand the factors that should be considered in the drug testing decision. In the first study, organizations were surveyed by telephone and were asked to identify the factors considered when making their decision. Safety seemed to be the most important reason for favoring a drug testing program, while employee rights was one of many reasons for not implementing a testing program. In the second study, the interest was in determining the impact of drug testing on the applicants' willingness to join the organization. It was found that salary was the most important factor, but that the drug testing policy did affect the job choice of about 20% of the students.     

Drug testing in the workplace: An overview of legal and philosophical issues

This article examines a range of legal and philosophical issues related to the drug-testing debate. The discussion of legal issues includes potential litigation on constitutional grounds (for public employees), statutory and tort grounds, or on the basis of civil rights legislation. Arbitration standards are also examined for situations involving unionized employees. The article further highlights pragmatic issues including the accuracy and costs (economic and noneconomic) of drug tests as well as the distinction between a positive drug test and impaired performance. Finally, the article addresses the delicate balance between an employer's right to unimpaired performance and an employee's right to privacy.     

Don't “just say no” to drug testing in the workplace: Some recommendations for developing and implementing policy

The widespread use of contraband substances by organizational members continues to present policy makers with a plethora of legal, moral, and economic issues to contend with when designing and implementing a comprehensive substance abuse policy. This article addresses methods of drug testing and their relative advantages and limitations, the legal ramifications of policy decisions, including union and nonunion concerns, and the costs and benefits associated with drug testing and screening. General guidelines for the design and implementation of a substance abuse policy are offered, and it is suggested that organizations should not summarily dismiss drug testing as a vehicle for the control and elimination of contraband substances and their use in the workplace.     

Considering grievance mediation

This article uses a public sector case study and a review of the social science literature on disputing processes to question assumptions made by labor relations advocates of grievance mediation. The author argues that labor policy on alternative grievance resolution processes cannot be adequately made without consideration of the specific labor-management relationship within its social context. A model is proposed to assist parties considering grievance mediation by making the social context more explicit.     

Supervisory and nonsupervisory employee attitudes about drug testing

Both supervisory and nonsupervisory employees are divided in their support for drug testing n the workplace. Comparisons are drawn between employee attitudes displayed in this study with student and public attitudes reported in previous studies. Factors associated with employee attitudes toward drug testing include: occupational group, acceptance of related employer disciplinary rules, interest in training on assisting those with substance abuse problems, and the timing of discipline and referrals for assistance. The implications of these findings for drug-testing programs are discussed.     

Employee drug testing: A constitutional perspective

The proliferation of employee drug testing by federal and state governments and by private sector employers acting pursuant to governmental directives has led to a steadily growing number of lawsuits raising constitutional challenges to such testing. Most of these cases have been based on the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures. In 1989, the Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of employee drug tests for the first time in two cases,Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Ass'n andNational Treasury Employees Union v. Von Raab. Recognizing that urinalysis drug testing constitutes a search for Fourth Amendment purposes, the Court determined the constitutionality of the drug tests by balancing the governmental interest in the testing against the privacy interest of the employees and, in both cases, upheld the drug testing at issue. TheSkinner andVon Raab decisions provided guidelines for analyzing Fourth Amendment challenges to employee drug testing, and the lower courts are now in the process of applying and refining these guidelines. Constitutional challenges to employee drug testing programs have also been based on the due process clause and the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and on the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of religion. Unlike Fourth Amendment claims, however, these claims have rarely been successful.     

A model of employee responses to drug-testing programs

Testing employees for drug use is an increasingly widespread organizational response to the problem of employee drug abuse. Despite this, little attention has been given to its effects on employee attitudes and behavior. This paper reviews the issue of drug testing in industry, provides a theoretical model of employee perceptions of and responses to drug-testing programs, and offers an agenda for future research directions.     

Employee attitudes toward drug testing: Effects of individual characteristics and employment setting

Testing for the presence of drug continues to gain popularity as a method for controlling drug use in the workplace. It is important that employers understand how potential applicants and current employees will react to the various types and purposes of drug testing. Employees (n = 529) were interviewed to investigate the role of attitudes toward drugs and work setting characteristics in explaining acceptance or rejection of drug testing. Individuals believing users should be held responsible for becoming dependent on cocaine, who felt the primary cause of cocaine addiction was weak moral character, and those who felt cocaine users should be treated as criminals were more supportive of drug screening and the testing of current employees.     

The consequences of dual and unilateral commitment to the organisation and union

This article examines the pattern and consequences of commitment to organisation and union amongst union members in a UK National Health Service Trust. Those who perceived the industrial relations climate as positive were more likely to be dually committed to both organisation and union. As anticipated, union commitment predicted union citizenship behaviours and intent to quit the union. However, organisational commitment predicted intent to quit the organisation but not organisational citizenship behaviour, which was predicted by union commitment. Findings suggest that those with a unilateral commitment to the union are more likely than the dually committed to engage in citizenship behaviours aimed at helping fellow members and colleagues, perhaps because they feel unconstrained by any strong loyalty to the organisation.     

The role of management and trade union leadership on dual commitment: The mediating effect of the workplace relations climate

This article examines the effect of transformational and laisser‐faire leadership on the part of local union leaders and immediate supervisors on the dual commitment of unionised workers. Building on the social information processing perspective, it is suggested that these leadership styles are linked to commitment through the workplace relations climate (WRC). Based on a sample of 834 unionised workers, our results suggest that WRC represents an important mechanism explaining the effect of the immediate supervisor's leadership in unionised settings. Results also show that transformational leadership on the part of union representatives is positively linked to union and organisational commitment. This article contributes to the WRC and dual commitment literatures by going beyond structural and institutional explanations and considering relational and actor‐related variables, such as leadership styles.     

The Rise and Demise of Defined Benefit Pension Plans

The Defined Benefit Pension Plan (DBPP), once regarded as the gold standard of traditional corporate pension plans, has fallen upon hard times. Corporate sponsors regard the plans as financial drains, fountains of bad publicity, and targets for heavy-handed government regulation. Employees covered by the plans fear they will not deliver on the promises employers made to provide financial security after retirement. Legislative fixes for the system have hastened, not slowed down, the exodus of employers from DBPP. The authors of this paper agree that DBPP is, indeed, an endangered species in the private sector, but concur with the criticism that the conventional explanations for it – particularly in the trade literature – tend be self-serving, superficial and not convincing and often incomplete in their analysis. Using Porter’s model of competition to identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of competing influences we endorse the conclusion that the failure of DBPP is one of strategic choice by employers whose power and influence in the global economy is not effectively counter-balanced by labor, or by forces sympathetic to labor. The growing trend towards the Defined Contribution Pension Plan (DCPP) is consonant with employers’ interests but a setback for employees who had to give up the “gold standard” (DBPP). Even the paradoxical effect of ERISA hastening the demise of the pension system it was created to reform is less puzzling when examined in the context of who had influence in drafting the legislation, writing regulations and enforcing the law.     

The trade union response to new technology

While there is ambivalence towards the new technology within the trade union movement, the general belief is that - provided its introduction is controlled by collective bargaining and sympathetic government action - it will lead to increased leisure and higher living standards. The author suggests that the ‘silicon dream’ is more likely to become a nightmare.     

Exploring the interaction of firm-level change and national institutional environments in shaping employment and union relations: a comparative case study of four European airlines

Drawing on the example of the airline industry, this paper explores in a longitudinal comparative case study the question of how firm-level changes and national institutional environments interact in shaping employee and union relations. Adding to previous research in comparative institutional analysis and comparative employment relations, we illustrate that the way in which industry pressures and national-level effects play out to influence employee and union relations depends on firm-level changes, mainly in the form of firm growth, acquisitions and the foundation of new subsidiaries. We show in particular that depending on firm-level changes, the very same firm might engage differently with a given institutional context at different points in time. Hence, our work illustrates the importance of firm growth, acquisitions and the foundation of new subsidiaries in explaining the shifting interaction between the firm and its institutional environment, and its implications for changing employee and union relations within firms.     

Macroeconomic and financial stability in a monetary union: The case of Lithuania

In this paper, we study the implications of macroprudential policies in a monetary union for macroeconomic and financial stability. For this purpose, we develop a two-country monetary union new Keynesian general equilibrium model with housing and collateral constraints, to be calibrated for Lithuania and the rest of the euro area. We consider two different scenarios for macroprudential policies: one in which the ECB extends its goals to also include financial stability and a second one in which a national macroprudential authority uses the loan-to-value ratio (LTV) as an instrument. The results show that both rules are effective in making the financial system more stable in both countries, and especially in Lithuania. This is because the financial sector in this country is more sensitive to shocks. We find that an extended Taylor rule is indeed effective in reducing the volatility of credit, but comes with a cost in terms of higher inflation volatility. The simple LTV rule, on the other hand, does not compromise the objective of monetary policy. This reinforces the “Tinbergen principle”, which argues that there should be two different instruments when there are two different policy goals.     

Drug testing in the transportation industry: The maritime case

The maritime industry provides an interesting case study of the design and implementation of drug-testing programs in the transportation industry during the 1980s. It is clear that such programs were designed and implemented less because of empirical evidence of safety problems than for political reasons. The results in the maritime industry are indicative of a program that is expensive to operate, intrusive with regard to employee privacy, and which will have little or no impact on safety. Focusing such programs on the issue of impairment rather than on the issue of drug usage per se is likely to improve the outcome of the programs. Although, despite common belief, there is little evidence that drug usage or the “drug problem” in U.S. society as a whole had gotten worse in the preceding years (Schonsheck, 1989, 250–251).     

The trade union response to agency labour in Britain

The growth of agency work in recent years has posed a challenge to trade unions, which must decide if they will accept agency workers as part of their constituency and accept employment agencies as legitimate labour‐market actors. This article analyses the reaction of British unions to agency work and identifies four main responses: exclusion, replacement, regulation and engagement. It concludes with an evaluation of union policies, which stresses the need for unions to secure broad regulation of the agency labour market either through multi‐employer bargaining or employment law.     

The trade union response to agency labour in Sweden

This article explores the possibilities for temporary agency workers to gain union representation at workplace level. Using Heery's classification of four different union responses to agency work—Exclusion, Regulation, Replacement and Engagement—we found that, even though the union wishes to represent agency workers, there are institutional conditions obstructing them from succeeding.     

Company and union commitment: evidence from an adversarial industrial relations climate at a Korean auto plant

This study examines the feasibility and antecedents of worker commitment to company and union at an automobile plant in Korea. It utilized a sample of 331 workers at the plant who were implementing new management techniques, e.g. human resources management, total quality management and lean production. The plant had a long history of adversarial industrial relations, and its workforce was organized by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, a union organization known for its militancy. The study found little evidence of workers' dual commitment to the company and the trade union, but instead discovered a competing commitment between company and trade union. Furthermore, company and union commitment were predicated on different factors, with workers' positive perceptions of the industrial relations climate positively affecting commitment to their company and negatively affecting commitment to their union. The findings were more consistent with those at other workplaces with an adversarial industrial relations climate rather than those with a co-operative one.     

Confronting the issue of substance abuse in the workplace: When organized labor and management work together

The focus of this report is to describe the efforts of management (Midwest Coca-Cola) and organized labor (Local 792, International Brotherhood of Teamsters) in attempting to confront the issue of substance abuse (drugs and alcohol) by employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement. The conclusion is reached that the experience at Midwest Coca-Cola's bottling facility is an excellent example of management and organized labor recognizing a common threat, arguing to deal with the threat, and attempting through joint action to confront the menace of substance abuse in the workplace.     

A better approach by management in drug testing

Discussed here are a number of drug abuse and drug testing issues. This article presents an overview of current developments in the area of drug testing in the workplace. There is an analysis of legislation, federal and state court decisions, and key legal arguments. These decisions and arguments are discussed in the context of employee rights and responsibilities. Also presented are the legal and ethical aspects of drug testing in the workplace. The authors make a case for a rehabilitative rather than a punitive approach to employee drug abuse.