Overcoming Employee Resistance to Workplace Alcohol and Drug Testing
When employees face the reality of mandatory drug and alcohol testing they often feel resentment toward their employer for being required to undergo the process. Yet in today’s world such testing is, more often than not, an official part of every credible employment contract. What, then, is the origin of employee resentment? And what, if anything, should employers do to overcome, sidestep, or diminish employee concerns?
It seems ironic that employee resentment for workplace drug testing (and workplace alcohol testing) runs high, even among those who neither drink nor use drugs. “After all,” a manager might argue, “they have nothing to fear if they’re clean.” But perhaps fear has nothing to do with it.
The negative arguments recorded by employees regarding alcohol and drug testing are highly personal in nature, whereas the arguments by owners and management favoring testing are far more impersonal. Employees are quoted as making statements such as: They should have no right to use my body to seek evidence against me. This is just a way to get rid of the people they don’t want to work here any longer. Managers and business owners, on the other hand, make statements such as: Everyone who works here agrees to workplace alcohol testing before they’re offered a position. Those who are tested are picked randomly. Everybody will undergo workplace drug testing eventually.
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