what do you think about drug testing
well
unnecessary a necessary evil i guess
yeah i think that it's appropriate in some job categories uh jobs that involve safety and
you know that that performance of which really would have an effect on the the the lives and safety of other people you know health professionals and people who
uh operate machinery and fly and or drive whatever i think that those are really important i'm not sure how i feel about about other jobs just
uh for the purpose of determining whether or not an employee is
drug free you know on on general principles
well
but i can really see the justification for the others
yeah uh i guess i'm uh
partly biased since we just recently our company's gone to the uh process of
initiating drug testing on a random basis
uh-huh for all job categories
everybody uh in the corporation
uh-huh
so whether you're an executive behind a desk or you're operating a vehicle or whatever
that's correct
and and how do they how do they do that how often generally does random mean
well it's uh
other than they uh they insisted on the uh you know management and
and supervision taking the uh being done within the first year
which we've all been done you know
uh seems to be
so in the past month
the past year
oh since nineteen ninety one it started is that right
uh right actually late in ninety it was
uh-huh
but you know they it's fairly infrequent it's just that it's there you know
uh-huh uh-huh
when you say infrequent is it maybe once a quarter or
oh Lord no i don't think uh
first of all in my group
hardly a fourth of them have been tested you know
how large is that group
uh it's about uh twenty people
uh-huh uh-huh
so what do you see as the reasons that they chose to do that
that the company chose to do that
well
was it insurance issue or
that uh they want to you know social uh issues
safety issue
uh-huh
so uh on a performance level there was actually
a problem with abuse of substances and they wanted to make sure that they were reducing that or
yeah i think that
that was probably the prime motivation and insurance like you say to get uh
uh-huh
yeah
what kind of a company is it
Texas Instruments
oh i guess i should have figured anybody i talk to in Texas is is probably from TI
yeah
interesting well
they really i guess i shouldn't stray from the subject but they have some very interesting topics for for questions
i often wonder who has created them
yeah i guess there uh
may have been just a committee throwing out suggestions
was the response from the employees regarding drug testing favorable or
it was uh it was received at our site here in Houston
fairly easily however in Austin where they have a lot of engineers and uh
i guess a younger set uh people they uh they were pretty uh a lot of people quit over it and uh quite a
oh really
quite a bit of furor yeah
interesting quit on general principle
i guess yeah there was some people that just actually quit because of the
their uh objection to the policy being forced on them you know
uh-huh
uh-huh is there some concern that the tests may not be completely accurate that you might be taking some prescription medication and and
uh i don't know how much of that there is i don't think it's that big of an issue because they've hired a national company and it's you know handled
be interpreted correctly
third party and there's supposed to be a lot of safe guards and all that
uh-huh uh-huh
do you know if anyone's been uh
um
disciplined or
oh yes they've they've they've been people that have been uh
the company has a
you get a two step process the first time if you're caught you have to uh take a uh you know go into a program to even if you're not you know
still have to go into a program even
so even if it's you know one time
yeah if you're if you're you're high you know if you fail the test whatever reason you have to go in into a program and uh course that can be very quickly taken care of if you're not a habitual user or whatever
uh-huh
uh-huh uh-huh
then uh after that first time chance then the second time it's automatic termination so
seems fair certainly if people are prepared for the fact that
there's a chance they're going to be tested you think they'd be smart enough if they did have a problem to eliminate their use
yeah well it's
it's almost become a uh non topic anymore
