Workforce Management
October 2009
An automotive parts distributor is the target of lawsuits over its drug-testing policy, including one filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that workers’ rights were violated when they were tested for legally prescribed drugs. By Jeff Casale
An automotive parts distributor is the target of lawsuits over its drug-testing policy, including one filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that workers’ rights were violated when they were tested for legally prescribed drugs.
The EEOC filed a complaint last month in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee against Rochester Hills, Michigan-based Dura Automotive Systems, which tested all of its production employees for certain legally prescribed drugs in addition to illegal, controlled substances in 2007.
The EEOC contends that Dura violated “various provisions” of the Americans with Disabilities Act by testing for legally prescribed drugs without having just cause. According to the complaint on behalf of employees of Dura’s Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, plant, the employer “tested without reasonable suspicion that such medications were affecting the employees in performance of their jobs.”
Further, the lawsuit states that Dura practiced “unlawful” employment practices, including suspending employees in excess of 30 days if they tested positive for certain legally prescribed medications. Dura also required that employees disclose medical conditions for which they had to take the drugs and required workers to forgo taking their medications as a condition of returning to work, according to the suit.
If workers failed at their job duties without the benefit of their prescribed medications, they were fired, the suit alleges.
Full Story: http://www.workforce.com/archive/feature/26/70/67/index.php
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