Employee Privacy Rights in the Workplace.

Essay by cheatingdebCollege, UndergraduateA+, September 2005

download word file, 6 pages 4.1

Drug testing in the workplace is a violation of employee privacy rights. Drug testing in the workplace was founded under the idea of protecting the employer from employees that had attendance, tardiness, theft and accidents assumed to be related to drug and alcohol abuse. To protect an employee's right to privacy an employer should seek out alternatives to detecting and preventing drug and alcohol abuse in the workplace other than drug testing. Drug testing has often been found to be inaccurate and a waste of an employer's time and money. Therefore; drug testing does not protect the employer or the employee from drug and alcohol abuse in the workplace but violates the employee's right to privacy.

It is easy to imagine that some human resource experts across the United States would argue that drug testing is useful and cost effective to their organizations. Executives might also say that posting the fact that the company requires pre-hire drug testing would weed out potential drug and alcohol abusers from applying for a particular position or job.

Advertising that the company requires pre-hire drug testing could though weed out potential quality employees as well. Some people might say that only small portions of the population are actual abusers of drugs and alcohol. If all businesses were required to perform pre-hire and random drug tests, how effective would drug testing be at detecting drug and alcohol abusers? Because drug testing is often inaccurate as I will point later the pre-hire drug testing would not be effective.

In the example below I show that not all on the job accidents are related to employees who may or may not abuse drugs or alcohol. Many corporations spend millions of dollars each year for pre-hire and random drug testing. These costs are incurred without any legitimate proof...