About 15 months ago I got a part time job at Rockler Woodworking & Hardware. At the time I was hired, Rockler had vacation and holiday benefits for part time employees. They had no drug testing policy.
Over the course of the past year, the vacation and holiday benefits for part time employees disappeared. Last July, Rockler announced that it was implementing a Drug and Alcohol Testing Policy. As part of that announcement it printed up notices for each employee to sign, consenting to application of the new policy. When I signed mine, I added "I do not consent to this policy change."
One month later, I received a letter from Coy Hillstead, the Human Resources Manager at Rockler, stating that I had to consent to the new policy or my employment would be terminated. I responded to Coy with the following letter:
Dear Coy,
I have reviewed your letter dated 21 August 2009 concerning my refusal to consent to Rockler’s "Notification of Policy Change – Drug and Alcohol Testing Policy" and your requirement that I consent to the change or face employment termination.
I am not a drug user. I drink alcohol rarely. I do not object to this policy change to hide anything about myself. I object based on the following principles.
Drug and alcohol testing in any circumstance is an invasion of privacy interests. This is abundantly clear under well-established constitutional and criminal law. In a criminal case a search warrant is required before a person can be compelled to relinquish DNA evidence, blood or other bodily fluids. These rights of privacy are central to what it means to be American.
In some occupations, however, the invasion of privacy can be outweighed by exceptional risks to the public, such as for airline pilots, train engineers, police officers or other public servants, heavy equipment operators, etc.
My employment at Rockler does not meet any of these exceptional criteria that would justify to my mind the invasion of privacy your drug and alcohol testing policy would allow. This privacy invasion is intensified by the lingering effects of recreational drug use in adipose tissue that persists long after any effect of the drug has worn off. The damage this can cause a person’s public reputation and liberty interests is enormous.
The lack of necessity of your recent policy change seems best illustrated by the monthly "OSHA Report" Rockler circulates to each of its stores. Most of the stores have gone months or years without any workplace incident. Has there ever been a single incident in any store in which alcohol or drug use has been reasonably suspected? Your policy will, I predict, have little to no effect in improving the safety of all Rockler locations. The invasion of privacy your policy threatens is far too vast to be justified by $10 per hour employment in retail where the heaviest equipment used is a hand truck.
In addition, I object to the lack of specificity of your guidelines. There is no limitation on what type of drug testing may be administered or how invasive that testing can be. Further, some types of drug testing have been found to be unreliable and that matter has not been sufficiently addressed either.
For these reasons I am not willing to alter my decision to withhold my consent to the application of that policy to me. I am, however, willing to continue to work for Rockler under the original and material terms and conditions of employment in existence at the time of my hire.
. . .
I received a telephone call from Coy the day I sent that letter, telling me that Rockler was going to revisit the issue and that he'd get back to me in a week or so. Well, last Friday he called me and told me that Rockler was committed to its new policy and that as a result my employment was terminated immediately.
I expressed my principles about why I oppose drug testing in the letter I wrote to Coy. The only other additional information I'd like to share here is that Rockler has a competitor, Woodcraft, and I would encourage any woodworker who feels the same way I do about drug testing and civil liberties to shop Woodcraft first.
Thanks for reading.