Question:
Here at Motorola, the mandatory drug testing policy was put into place
with the rationale that "Federal regulations require that we have such
a program if we wish to be awarded federal contracts".
Can anyone point me to the pertinent federal regulation(s)? I'd be
interested in reading them for myself.
Answer:
I don't have chapter-and-verse available, but what I gather is that
Federal contracts require that drug-free workplace policy be in effect.
A drug-testing program is *ONE WAY* of implementing such a policy. It
is not the ONLY way. One place I worked at satisfied this requirement
by (a) prohibiting the possession or use of controlled substances on
workplace grounds (reasonable, in my opinion), (b) reserving the right
to drug-test if there was cause to believe you were impaired on the job,
and (c) providing an EAP for drug rehabilitation if one tested positive.
Personally, I'd most favor a policy that emphasized *impairment* testing,
and threw in a drug-testing backup as a sop to the Feds (i.e. test for
drugs iff the employee fails the impairment test N times...).
