NEED HELP - ASAP!!!! What if EE refuses to go for an alcohol test
lrenoll
25 Posts
I have a situation right now where a supervisor has smelled alcohol on an employee. She just infomred me today (that is another issue I plan on addressing) of this. The EE does not smell of it at this current writing. Our attorney has advised that the next time the supervisor smells this on the employee that we should immediately take the EE for testing. One question I missed asking him is ... what if she refuses? Our drug and alcohol policy is old, so it does not give any retributions for refusal to agree to a test. HELP! She apparently has come back from lunch smelling of alcohol.
Comments
I think you should first of all update your drug-free workplace policy right away, and provide training to all employees, and have them sign a form saying they received training and understand it. We are a drug-free workplace too and have a comprehensive policy which addresses all those issues in writing (including what happens if they refuse to go for testing, be it post-offer, random or reasonable suspicion) and we have forms that employees must sign. We provide annual refresher training on our drug-free workplace policy to all employees as well, so that should a situation like that come up, there are no excuses as to what exactly is expected of them.
Unless the employee is in a safety sensitive position, I would be cautious about doing reasonable suspicion testing unless my policy was well written and administered, including current employee training. We have had this happen at our plant in the past, and the employee was tested right away and did test positive, and then since our policy states that a first offense requires EAP sessions (mandatory) plus two years of testing (every time we do randoms), that's what we did.
Good luck!
Of course, some of this may have to be observed by the supervisor or other individuals for a period to ensure that there is something going on. Also, if possible, the employee needs to be talked to at that point as to what is going on if there is unusual performance or conduct (of course, the observations continue during the conference).
In short, a knowledgeable lay person (or two) can attest to the impairment coupled with the smell of alcohol in a situation that is unusual for the employee to lead one to believe the employee is intoxicated on the job.