Today, both employees and employers should adhere to legal statutes and common law that reveal specific rights and obligations of the parties concerned. Because employers and employees are bound by an employment agreement, they should learn certain rules, rights, and obligations that they have to observe and respect (August, 2004).
In particular, employers should provide the corresponding payment and ensure a favorable working environment and workplace safety. What is more important is that employers should strike balance between personal life and work of employees. Thus, there is a growing tendency in reshaping corporate cultures to bring in the balance to the employed environment, which improves the organizational cultures and reduces turnover (August, 2004).
However, debates on the necessity of introducing drug testing among the employees create controversies. On the one hand, employers are not allowed to interfere with employees’ personal issues because drug use is the individual right of each person. On the other hand, employees should care about workplace safety and, in case employees takes drugs that influences their health and creates potential threat to his productivity and overall performance, the issues require much more careful consideration.
Despite the necessity to consider to the privacy issues, there are specific situations when employers have the right to check their employees on drug use. The case concerns the employees taking specialized positions. For instance, the workers of the Department of Transportation, such as pilots or bus drivers, must be subject to drug testing because ignorance can cause potential threats to other employees and customers.
In addition, Repa (2010) agrees with the idea to introduce “drug testing for employees with national security clearances, prison officers, employees at chemical weapons and nuclear power plants, and police officers” (p. 176). However, employers should mind that drug-tested employees could not be discharged in case of positive results.
The issue of drug testing among the employees should define in contextual terms and, therefore, it does not often relate to the privacy issues. In this regard, employers should have a clear distinction between such cases. Particularly, Wines (2006) acknowledges that the analysis of the issues includes striking the balance between the interests of both employee and employer.
Certainly, intrusion into employees’ privacy rights will not be supported by the court because it does not allow employers to gather information about employees’ drug use. Therefore, drug testing should be based on the mutual consent of the parties; more importantly, it should not violate employees’ rights.
References
August, R. (2004). International Business Law: Text, Cases, and Readings. US: Prentice Hall.
Repa, B. K. (2010). Your Rights in the Workplace. US: Nolo.
Wines, W. A. (2006). Ethics, Law, and Business. New York: Routledge.