Drug Test In The Work Place

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EDMONTON - A few hours earlier, Phyllis Roberto had just been doing her job. Now, she was being led down a foul-smelling hallway in one of the seediest hotels in Edson, Alta., by three men.

She couldn't really see -- her eyes were stinging and blurry and the skin around them was red and swollen after being sprayed with a chemical glue during an accident at the Weyerhaeuser mill in the town, about 205 kilometres west of Edmonton. Roberto, a mid-40s mother of five and a technician at the mill, was tired, confused, in pain and, increasingly, humiliated.

Roberto was being taken for a drug test -- standard procedure after workplace accidents at Weyerhaeuser, the international forest products giant that employs 55,000 people in 18 countries.

"I could hear people laughing in the hallway and I thought 'I wonder if they know,' " she recalls. "I looked pretty rough, like I'd had a rough night and it was ending even rougher."

It was February 2003 and Roberto had been unhooking a heavy metal hose on top of a railway tank car full of chemical glue. Toward the end of her overnight shift, a blast of the material sprayed out of the tank car, hitting Roberto in the face and knocking off her safety glasses.

Fellow workers took her to the hospital. About 7:30 a.m., after an eye exam, Roberto headed home to sleep. Several hours later, she was awakened by phone and told she had to have a drug test to see if she was impaired when the accident happened.

When Roberto questioned the need for such a test, she was informed she'd be suspended without pay if she refused, or with pay if she co-operated and took the test. She would remain suspended until the results came back several days later.

'It didn't feel like I had much of a choice," says Roberto, secretary of Local 447 of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada.

Roberto expected the test would be done in a clinic setting. Instead, she found herself in a cheap hotel room with two Weyerhaeuser managers, her union representative and another man who was to collect the urine sample.

"The hotel room smelled like urine and stale cigarettes and old booze and vomit and things like that kind of hotel smells like," she recalls.

Roberto was told to go into the bathroom and produce a sample while the four men sat in the other room, able to hear her urinate. But she couldn't pee enough. Finally, she sat on the bathroom floor and cried.

Though she tested negative, rumours circulated around Edson that she might be a drug user -- her teenage daughter was teased by peers who had heard about the test. Over the next few weeks, she experienced bouts of uncontrolled and unexplained crying, insomnia, nightmares and agitation. In the spring of 2003, she began counselling and was advised to take a leave from work because she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Roberto was unable to go back to work until the end of August. The Weyerhaeuser short-term disability plan covered her pay only for two weeks, and she was without income for 21/2 months. In a grievance filed through her union, Roberto is seeking compensation from Weyerhaeuser for her lost wages, pain and suffering. The application before the Labour Relations Board was completed in November 2003, but a decision has not yet been handed down.

Meanwhile, Weyerhaeuser public affairs manager Sarah Goodman says policies have been changed so workers can be tested in a "clean and appropriate place where someone will feel comfortable."

Roberto acknowledges her experience with workplace drug testing might be more negative than most. But her story illustrates something she thinks is very important. "Innocent people can and will be hurt if drug testing is not handled carefully," she says.

Roberto's experience offers a cautionary tale and poses difficult questions that employers, employees and government must confront, especially now that Alberta is considering a legislative framework for mandatory drug and alcohol testing in the workplace.

In June, Clint Dunford, the province's minister of human resources and employment, predicted that within five years Alberta would have laws to define an employer's right to test employees for drug and alcohol use. The government needs to act, Dunford said, to deal with the increasing problem of people showing up for work drunk or drugged, a health and safety issue, especially on construction and industrial sites.

If Dunford proceeds as planned, Alberta -- with a workforce of more than 1.7 million -- would be the only province to set up laws on drug testing. "I know it's going to be hugely controversial but at some point we've got to deal with impairment in the workplace."

In British Columbia, the government is not currently looking at creating laws to define employers' rights to test workers for drugs and alcohol use, says Graham Currie, spokesman for the Ministry of Skills, Development and Labour. "It's not something that is under consideration in B.C," he says.

Whether or not laws are enacted, workplace drug-testing is becoming more commonplace. It's hard to know how many Canadian employers test for drugs.

Dr. Penny Colbourne, director of Dynacare Kasper's substance abuse testing lab in Edmonton, says the company has about 4,000 clients across Canada who test employees for drugs and alcohol.