Posted on 05/19/2017 7:26:53 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Workers at McLane drive forklifts and load hefty boxes into trucks. The grocery supplier, which runs a warehouse in Colorado, needs people who will stay alert — but prospective hires keep failing drug screens.
“Some weeks this year, 90 percent of applicants would test positive for something,” ruling them out for the job, said Laura Stephens, a human resources manager for the company in Denver.
The state’s unemployment rate is already low — 3 percent, compared to 4.7 percent for the entire nation. Failed drug tests, which are rising locally and nationally, further drain the pool of eligible job candidates.
“Finding people to fill jobs,” Stephens said, “is really challenging.”
Job applicants are testing positive for marijuana, cocaine, amphetamine and heroin at the highest rate in 12 years, according to a new report from Quest Diagnostics, a clinical lab that follows national employment trends. An analysis of about 10 million workplace drug screens from across the country in 2016 found positive results from urine samples increased from 4 percent in 2015 to 4.2 percent in 2016.
The most significant increase was in positive tests for marijuana, said Barry Sample, the scientist who wrote the report. Positive tests for the drug reached 2 percent last year, compared with 1.6 percent in 2012.
Although state laws have relaxed over the past four years, employers haven’t eased up on testing for pot, even where it’s legal.
California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada moved last year to legalize recreational marijuana, joining Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia, meanwhile, permit medical marijuana.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Personally I have never taken a Drug Test, self employed since 1983, drug testing is the very definition of fascism. But putting that aside, what do you think would happen to drug testing policies nationwide if ALL Employee’s, Associates, Executives, Stock Holders, .... were required to take the same exact Drug Test with the same frequency in order to be associated of said business??
And It should be Mandatory that Every Public Employee across this country take weekly drug tests if we are going to have this Policy.
Just like laziness isn’t addictive...my belief is that almost anything can be addictive.
Marijuana stays in your system for 15 to 30 days if your a chronic user, if the job requires a DOT drug test and your looking for a young person it might be difficult in that area of the country. If unemployment is only 3 % I concur with the other guy pay more. You can be sober all day and smoke pot at night wake up and be fine but the pot will be picked up in a drug test, alcohol not so much
Companies in our area are hiring Somalis. I think there is some sort of government program involved with their hiring.
and these new hires are crashing some of the departments. They wont work. They wont take direction. They are entitled and sit. Not all but most.
So if they don’t work in a department, then the other workers, refuse to work. Managers are faced with departments full of people who are refusing to do their jobs.
For a department goes as fast as its slowest worker.
We keep thinking that people from other cultures will have the same work ethic as northern Europeans. But they don’t.
I was raised and I raised my children in that culture. But that is not the culture of Mexico, or of most of the countries in Africa, or Mediterranean area and the Middle east. Heck it isn’t the culture of the American black and Mexican ghettos. Or some parts of the white underclass.
We are expecting people to behave like striving white American men and women. Not to be.
China has a similar work ethic as the US, but not the same moral underpinnings and social contract
India is similar to China in this regard.
Good ideal, but will not happen, good ideals usually never do
“And It should be Mandatory that Every Public Employee across this country take weekly drug tests if we are going to have this Policy.”
I got randomly tested for drugs about five times between 2004 and 2015 at the alphabet “Agency” where I worked. It was usually a pain, but they did catch people doing drugs, and that didn’t end well for them.
Hey, they need to have people that are drug free to show that the tests weren’t botched. Try to consider it a feather in your cap instead of a hassle, even though it might be inconvenient to do it so often.
If they test for beer use in the last 24 hours, we’re hosed.
Why is it OK for a person to get drunk on his free time, but not to use marijuana? Not being stoned *at work* is the same as not showing up to work drunk.
You know, I have long witnessed this in various capacities. However, one that I see very transparently on a daily basis is that of people’s personal property.
I work in a downtown mid-sized city. During lunchtime strolls I regularly walk past the property of those whose income appears not to be high. The houses are modest but still decent, yet the yard and their surroundings are a complete disheveled mess. Weeds everywhere. Trash and junk all around. “Grass” high and unmowed. Trees and shrubs way overgrown.
I mean what does it take to have a modicum of self respect to clean up your own property? Cleaning and maintaining your property doesn’t take a high income. Why do you choose to live like a disheveled slob and bring down the entire neighborhood.
I’m not talking about the old or disabled who may struggle with upkeep, I’m talking about otherwise able bodied people who no doubt grouse and complain about “the man” keeping him down and demanding yet more government assistance. (And in this neighborhood, in this specific city, these people are empirically hardcore Dem voters.)
I never understood this.
I mean what does it take to have a modicum of self respect to clean up your own property? Cleaning and maintaining your property doesn’t take a high income. Why do you choose to live like a disheveled slob and bring down the entire neighborhood.
I’m not talking about the old or disabled who may struggle with upkeep, I’m talking about otherwise able bodied people who no doubt grouse and complain about “the man” keeping him down and demanding yet more government assistance. (And in this neighborhood, in this specific city, these people are empirically hardcore Dem voters.)
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Totally different culture and values.
I notice the cultural values difference when I travel from New Hampshire to Quebec.
Northern New England homes and properties are generally picked up but not prettied. The farms have equipment out, but no one breaks their necks making things attractive. They are maintained.
In Quebec, everything is pretty. There are few eyesores. If there is an oil tank attached to the house, it is hidden with fencing and plantings. I know I am generalizing here, but all of the homes have landscaping and flowers. It is a culture with a totally different value that is culturally encouraged to make things “nice.”
DO you hire someone who gets drunk on Friday night? Your pot test can discover someone who got high three weeks ago on a weekend. There is no test for the employee who got drunk on a weekend three weeks ago.
If the employers want employees bad enough, they might need to stop testing except for cause. If someone reeks of it, or they appear high, test and fire them just like you would a drunk. Otherwise, stay out of their life.
Good assessment. I have worked with all of them.
Yeah, it’s fascinating. I’m more fussy about such things but I understand if others aren’t. Yet keeping some order and maintenance seems pretty basic.
Specifically, the inactive metabolic byproducts can stay in one's system that long - one is not impaired the whole time. Many employers having a hard time filling jobs are shooting themselves in the feet by testing for performance-irrelevant days-ago pot use.
Indeed. The difference with alcohol is that after 24 hours or so, you generally can't detect it because the body works so hard to rid the body of the poison that alcohol is. Pot, on the other hand seems to be fairly well tolerated by the body, and given the levels that can be detected by modern methods, it can be detected a month later, long after it could have any actual effect on someone's ability to work.
Don't care for drugs myself, though I will cop to an occasional beer, though seldom, if ever to I drink more than a couple at a time, and even then it tends to be spread out over multiple hours. Personally, I wouldn't give a damn if someone working for me smoked on the weekends, as long as it's not at active levels when they were at work. Trouble is, with many drugs the answer seems to be a binary solution set. If present, it is verboten, regardless of whether it was last night, last week, or a month ago.
The current answer, of course, for those wishing to be gainfully employed is not to ingest any of the proscribed substances at all. Such a necessity doesn't affect me directly, as I'm unlikely in the extreme to do so in any case, but it seems a bit silly to me.
The really bad part about this is the possibility of false positives. Because of the way these substances are tested for many innocuous things can lead to false positives. Sure, in most circumstances, you can retest, but regardless of the outcome of subsequent tests, there is always that cloud hanging over one's head that they did, in fact, test positive for a proscribed substance. This can have consequences to one's future even through no fault whatsoever of the individual in question.
This is the main reason that I think near universal testing is a bad idea.
The lawmakers that have allowed use of these drugs have automatically made many people potentially unemployable. Plus creating many law enforcement problems in surrounding states that don’t allow drug use. Maybe the drug users can get government jobs.
The lawmakers that have allowed use of these drugs have automatically made many people potentially unemployable. Plus creating many law enforcement problems in surrounding states that don’t allow drug use. Maybe the drug users can get government jobs.
Sorry for the double post. I am not on anything.
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