'One-strike' pot-test rule for job hopefuls OKd

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

An employer can refuse to hire someone who has ever tested positive for marijuana or other drugs, even if the applicant is now clean and sober, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the "one-strike" rule of the Pacific Maritime Association, which controls hiring in the West Coast longshore industry, doesn't discriminate against rehabilitated addicts in violation of disability laws.

The rule "imposes a harsh penalty on applicants who test positive," and may seem unreasonable because many drug and alcohol users recover, the court said. But it said the maritime association had adopted the rule for safety purposes and did not single out former addicts.

A lawyer for a man who lost a chance for a longshore job because he had tested positive for marijuana seven years earlier said she knows of no other employer, including law enforcement and the armed services, that permanently bars applicants because of a single positive drug test.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/02/BALI1I2HEN.DTL&tsp=1

I guess there is no such thing as redemption in this country (except for bankers, I guess). And how is this not ex post facto?

edit: spelling

This is probably payback for their defeat in that effort.

They can use this ruling, if it isn't eventually overturned, to blacklist anybody who's ever tested positive for pot. Given that most of the ports they control are based in cities where pot usage was and is common, this could achieve through piss testing what they couldn't achieve through padlocks.

I hope the ILWU(of whose maritime division I'm a member)fights this.

What I can't figure out is why the Ninth Circuit, which right-wingers up here in Alaska always bash as biased towards liberals and environmentalists, would issue such a reactionary ruling.

Create a permanent Underclass; untouchables if you will.

It seems that the class war now demands that. The unreachable Elite rise ever higher on the money and power they have extracted from each of us while scores of our brothers and sisters fall to the way side with no hope of recovery or escape from the virtual bars being erected everyday by the corporate regime.

The message is straighten-up, fly right, go by our rules and think and act like we tell you to, or your economic fate is sealed. You can't buy or sell without our mark, baby!

"you dont want to end up as one of them, do you? displease us, and you will join them - forever"

as a consultant, I knew quite a few company employees who I swear would go along with murder if their employers demanded it - there was no morallity except their master's voice

marijuana and addict in the same sentence?

Once again, pot stays in your system for about 30 days while a junkie could test clean after 3.

What is the point of this test again?

Why should they even have access to the information of whether you tested positive for another company's drug test in the past? What about your right to privacy? Ridiculous.

Of course, they can get away with this ONLY because of massive unemployment, if they can get away with it at all. Just another mechanism to blame it on us poor folks.

"Cook's client, Santiago Lopez, was turned down for a longshore job at the Long Beach port in 1997 after he failed a drug test. He underwent treatment and applied again in 2004, but the association refused to consider him because of the earlier test."

No company was sharing information, he had failed once, and they decided it was permanent.

Let's hope it doesn't go down the road I thought it was going down.

Another ruling proping up corporate invasion of the people's privacy.

It shouldn't matter if someone used to be addicted. What matters is now.

If this is the test they are using, how about baring employment for CEOs that rip off the shareholders?

Are you fucking kidding me?

PB

....your livelihood.

Nothing new here, move along folks.

or something on a myspace or facebook page that ANYONE on earth doesnt like (which is why i would never have one)

it's a walk on eggs society - work hard all day, watch what you say, go straight home and dont have any fun on your own time

and hope the government doesnt target your livelyhood anyway through stuff life h-1b, NAFTA and MFN-China

:puke:

there should be repercussions

you can end up every bit as dead because of one of them

should they lose their livelyhoods, too?

I know of 2 situations personally

A Driver blows cold red light, taking pedestrian out of a crosswalk and over the top of their car

B Driver gets pulled over for DUI, no accident involved

Guess who was in deep trouble, and who was in no trouble whatsoever?

Should driver B have their career ruined, and driver A go scott free, even if driver B has been the pedestrian of driver A?

I agree that a DUI conviction should not preclude one from obtaining later employment

Oops, we already have that covered.

The THC stays in your system awhile so you get a DUI when you're not under the influence.

People need to learn to not have false positives on their drug tests. We should just give the company the right to search their homes for contraband.

Every generation of drug warriors is worse than the last.

but his kid got suprisingly light investigation from the state patrol when he killed 2 people on the highway

But you can bet there will be more. Now that its upheld, how long till one prior positive test disqualifies you from working at walmart and 7-eleven?

A single misdemeanor DUI will blackball you with one company I know of.

No one wants tokers now as well? Big freaking deal.

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in one's urine. Your analogy is a bit off, therefore.

Know of anything that gives a false breathalyzer reading?

Of course, that's different, too, as having a sip is not illegal, whether or not you drive. But, I take it, employer cited safety, not illegality.

Thank you.

Is anyone testing for the 2 martini lunch?

if you drink 2 drinks a day (wine w. dinner) then the changes in your liver function will show in blood tests for up to 2 years after you stop and that isn't even an alcoholic, not really, yet it disqualifies you from life insurance etc.

there is no 2 martini lunch in the 21st century unless you're the CEO or the CEO's kid

what a ridiculously failed analogy.

actually MANY alcoholics are very high functioning and have excellent attendance at work. that is the one thing they don't fuck up ... no money, no booze. not all of them of course.

them from ever doing businees again?

Every large corporation in the world would have to shut down. Hmmm.

People are not forbidden from working because of one positive drug test. A particular company is declining to employee that person because of one positive drug test. The worker is free to seek employment elsewhere.

A better analogy would be for an individual or company choosing not to do business with a company which has broken an enviromental, safety or business law.

I didn't say they could do business in another country. Just not within the bounds of the US.

what an absurd ruling to make, it places a group of people squarely into a the position of a "target" group.

and the Ninth at that (traditionally, pretty liberal). If they choose to pursue it, it will go to the Supremes and we all know what that ruling will be.

Oddly, as conservative as it is today, they've been relatively good on most Rights issues. They'd compare this with Federal law and see if the state overstepped Fed law on this.

Someone offering you some at a party could cost you your job, a month later, it stays in your system for up to a month - I wasnt going to let the 'war on drugs' ruin my career. I thought it could lead to a string of misfortune, but i didnt expect an outright lifelong blacklist like this

Being straight laced afterward, I felt pretty safe - I thought what can they do to me now? a 'war on computer programmers'? How naive i was. Then came H-1b, a war on computer programmers - "we have to punish those who did what we told them to do - that cant be tolerated".

Whatever you do, the government will get you for it

drug testing and if you test positive for the green, good luck ever getting another job driving a truck.

Might as well just refuse to take the test if its going to be dirty. Then it will never show up on your record.

one company banned it's employees from smoking at lunch ANYWHERE IN TOWN

Their loss, not mine.

Next time you have to take a drug test, go get two more at two different places that day. If the work test shows a false positive, sue them and sue them hard.

People need to learn just how often false positives show up in these things.

Not everyone uses it to get high.

if i were taking a legal prescription opiate from my doctor to handle severe pain, you wouldn't want me operating heavy equipment in a dangerous environment

it is unfortunate that we get sick and need medicine but when the medicine we take affects our brain and our reflexes, then it disqualifies us for certain jobs where safety is involved

if you want to make an argument in favor of giving this guy a job, make a sane argument, not a crazy one

calling the guy "sick" is not going to encourage anyone to hire him that offers a health insurance plan, nobody wants sick people added to their plan, that's just reality

make the argument he made a mistake one time, don't make the argument that he's sick -- not if you really want to help the dude

and is being denied a job TODAY. You sir, or madam, are heartless.

You cannot undo that.

i don't think you'ld have very many friends here after that. I don't know what you're doing on this site if you feel that way anyways.

and keep you from getting a job?

I don't expect to ever be allowed to drive others professionally.

You tested intoxicated while driving. He may have had zero or one hit during a weekend in the past month or so.

in re: to smoking pot?

Could President Obama or former President Gore land a job there, two Nobel Peace Prize Winners, they didn't take a urine test to fail, but didn't they admit to using it?

This kind of draconian elimination is ridiculous and illogical; unless it were part of a concerted effort to disenfranchise the American People from the economy, and then by extension the ability of those people to influence their government.

the reality of addiction is that it is a disease of the brain, and the overwhelming majority do not recover

i think this rule unfair because the 5 or 10 percent who overcome the overwhelming odds to recover and stop using should not be barred from working for life, but arguments that "many" recover are not convincing, we need to make genuine arguments in the interest of fairness and justice

if we make silly arguments, we just convince the folks that we are delusional

everyone who has any knowledge of addiction knows that it's a tiny number of those affected who recover, however, even a tiny minority deserves equal rights and justice

the argument that equal rights and justice are only important if "many" are affected is a bad argument anyway for a number of reasons

no serious organization that deals with addiction/alcoholism agrees that "many" recover, AA itself points out that this is a disease for life, with the resulting need to fight it for life -- there aren't really that many businesses that knowingly hire folks who have a lifelong disease requiring medical help -- they may not be open about the fact that they discriminate like this, but c'mon, if you have a marijuana conviction or failed test in your record, there are not many jobs open to you, they just may lie about the reason -- an arrest for drinking/DUI also ends your ability to work and has for quite awhile -- people need to wake up about reality, instead of kidding themselves that this is one time that happened to one guy who smoked weed 7 yrs ago -- this company made the mistake of being honest abt why they didn't hire him, they should have just said the job was already taken and they wouldn't be getting sued

which simply isnt so

you said "there aren't really that many businesses that knowingly hire folks who have a lifelong disease requiring medical help"

and AA isnt a science, it's a religion, based on an application of the Oxford group, and it's essentially unchanged since 1938. Science evolves based on evidence, religion remains unchanged based on beliefs. AA is clearly a religion, not a science

your statements scar someone for life in society with a devestating stigma, because they can never prove whether or not they have 'a disease' because there was never any scientific evidence that they had 'the disease' in the first place. It is a *religious'* classification, not a scientific one. How can you prove you dont have something which has no evidence of it's presence? I say 'you have it', you're harmed, and there's nothing you can do to contest it.

again, you said "there aren't really that many businesses that knowingly hire folks who have a lifelong disease requiring medical help"

it's because of people like you that people can get stigmantized for life into 2nd class existence because they cant un-prove unproven allegations, based on *religion*, not science

tell me just one case of a scientific medical treatment (outside of the addictions industry) that calls for a belief in a 'higher power' (that can be God, a tree or a rock) as central to the treatment - give me just one example

what's the motivation? money - lots of money. The addiction industry can tap the health insurance of anyone so accused - and the beauty is, there's no accountability for the industry whatsoever, because it's 'incurable'. what a luxury, to make big money with no proof of performance, whatsoever

cause there is a difference you know. :eyes:

his lawyers need to get the case heard en banc, that is, by the entire court.

where is this guy going to work? how is this fair? wtf. Fascism is here, in America, right now! :mad:

Anyone smoking it in a workplace that does drug testing is asking for trouble. Most companies will fire you for a failed drug test with no chance to rehire again.

Why risk your livelihood to smoke a joint? It's not that great of a high.

I believe eventually it will be legal, but until then, people need to think about using.

First off, pot IS legal in California if you have a MM license.

Second, the guy wasn't smoking at the workplace.

Third, pot stays in your system for 30-45 days so you can take one hit off of a joint, 29 days later test for a possible employer and still test positive which means you're out of the running for something you did 29 days ago. I'm pretty sure the affects have worn off by then.

Fourth, this was SEVEN YEARS AGO. People get less time in the Pen for Manslaughter.

Fifth, people go into their work place all the time zonked out on 'scripts such as Xanax and they're PERFECTLY LEGAL.

Sixth, if a company thinks they have dominion over what someone does after hours, they damned well can pay them on a 24/7 clock.

"First off, pot IS legal in California if you have a MM license."

Nobody cares.

"Second, the guy wasn't smoking at the workplace."

So what? If a dude isn't smoking meth on the workplace, well, he's still on meth.

"Third, pot stays in your system for 30-45 days so you can take one hit off of a joint, 29 days later test for a possible employer and still test positive which means you're out of the running for something you did 29 days ago. I'm pretty sure the affects have worn off by then."

Nope. A pot smoker is a wasteoid 30 days later. It takes a few years to clear up.

"Fourth, this was SEVEN YEARS AGO. People get less time in the Pen for Manslaughter."

Manslaughter is accidental killing. It does not compare to intentional actions.

"Fifth, people go into their work place all the time zonked out on 'scripts such as Xanax and they're PERFECTLY LEGAL."

They can, and will, be fired.

"Sixth, if a company thinks they have dominion over what someone does after hours, they damned well can pay them on a 24/7 clock."

So, raping small children or eating people or running drugs or using drugs are "not fireable offenses"? Because it's after hours? Wow.

The impairment isn't short term, it's long term.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

you've obviously led a very sheltered life. and seem quite naive.

Here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12427880

so the can feel better about abusing their bodies. You really need to get out more.

Are you saying some drugs don't clear your system immediately, and don't have lasting residual effects?

Or are you mocking long term effects, and saying they don't exist, and that "wet brain" is a myth?

Or, perhaps, that your drug of choice doesn't have that effect, but the drugs of others do?

The same .gov that classifies pot as a Class A substance the same as heroin? That government

:sarcasm:

?

If it's a conspiracy, it's global, and has taken over science and medicine, all around the planet.

Probably the same conspiracy that tells us that drinking alcohol is "bad".

Reefer Madness is nothing new to Boppers.

Science?
Support?
Studies?

Anything other than fantastical bullshit claims? :shrug:

That would be above this one.

Please (pretty please) provide a link.

I eagerly await your response.

Compared to what baseline?

Providing a googled link to a single abstract is insufficient support for such a sweeping claim.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Cannabis+and+Cognitive+Functioning

It's a huge pile of work, but the short and sweet is that the side-effects (or intentional effects, depending on the case) last long beyond the high.

and it doesn't smell like pot.

It is better to remain silent and be thought of as a fool than to speak (or in this case write) and remove all doubt? I mean, such brilliant reparte as "who cares?"

There's not a cogent statement in that entire missive so I'm just going to let it lie there for everyone to see.

with a sane workforce that abides by real human respect. This fascist system is going to implode, it is simply non sustainable.

going back 7 years is really crazy. I worked for a place that really wanted to fire me, and got urine tested 5 times in a week...but I haden't used any drugs-including alcohol-for years at that time. I found another, better job and quit, so I guess everyone was happy.

mark

of pot smokers! Their hatred for the most politicized drug lives on; pathetic and sad as that is, but hey we get what we vote for! :puke:

I heard that it's PURE HELL getting off the DEMON WEED!!!

No Insurance Company on earth will insure a Company
which would hire a person with 'any' known drug use.

Zero Tolerance is Fascism.
Urine Testing is Fascism.

You are assumed guilty, and must prove your innocence.

Paranoia over drugs and alcohol, of course, is primarily focused on the poor and middle class - rich people never get tested and can afford the kind of legal muscle to get things glossed over and thrown out of court. What crazy damned society do we live in where someone can be punished for taking a chemical substance 20 years after the incident? Somehow, the other developed economies of the world manage to putter along without these draconian laws.