Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me on this issue. I am sorry to hear about your fiancée’s condition and I’m happy that she has found a treatment that helps. I support and would defend her ability to have access to any treatment that works best for her.
However, I also support an employer’s right to hire who they want and to require those employees to meet company standards. If an employer believes alcohol, marijuana, or any drug use is incompatible with their business activity, I support their ability to require testing.
It’s difficult as a legislator to meet everyone’s wishes, especially when those wishes directly conflict.
I realize my response is likely not what you were hoping to hear.
Please take care.
So, Rep. Wingard, if this Stasher’s fiancée were treating bi-polar disorder with prescription Xanax and an Oregon employer decides benzodiazepene use is incompatible with their business activity, you’ll support the employer’s right to fire her, even if she performs admirably on the job?
Dear Sir;
Listened to your questions presented to the county clerks in the elections session yesterday. We get the same questions here in Benton County. The best way to resolve those questions seems to be to invite them down here to view the process for themselves. They often leave with a smile and a better understanding of what safeguards we employ to protect the election process. Some are so impressed they ask me to put them on staff; which I happily do.
We would like to invite you to visit our historic Benton County Courthouse during any election period and view the many different processes that go into accepting and counting ballots for yourself. It will change how you look at elections in Oregon.
Sincerely,
Jill Van Buren
Supervisor of Elections
Benton County
541 766-6834
I don’t know about Xanax but the SSRIs are linked to mass murders and I wouldn’t blame any employer who refused to hire someone taking Prozac or Zoloft or any of those other corporate Happy Pills. They’re a lot more dangerous than pot. (Not to mention that anyone who eats that crap is even stupider than a pot smoker, if that’s possible.)
What pisses me off though is blanket drug testing. It just assumes that everyone is a dope addict until they prove they’re not – i.e. you’re guilty until proven innocent. Any employer who does that ought to be taken out and hung. (Wouldn’t waste a bullet on them…)
I agree that an employer has the right and duty to fire or suspend any employee who is impaired and a risk on the job.
Possession of a medical marijuana card does not prove impairment or safety risk.
Testing positive for inactive THC-COOH metabolites on a urine screen does not prove impairment or safety risk. In fact, it suggests non-impairment, since it takes four-to-six hours after smoking for THC-COOH to show up on a urine screen, which is past the two-to-four hour window of impairment from smoking.
As part of Oregon NORML, we proposed that businesses adopt baseline electronic impairment testing, which is cheaper and more effective at determining actual impairment. It is better liked by employees, even though they can’t cheat it like they can a urine screen, because it is fair and non-invasive and no bodily fluids are involved.
Ah, but business leaders didn’t want that, because it WOULD catch actual impairment, regardless of source, like being hungover, lack of sleep, OTC medications, boredom, fatigue, and injury.
It’s not that business fears impaired workers. Business wants to discriminate against marijuana users because it fears lawsuits and losing federal contracts because the government discriminates against marijuana users.
Some prescription drugs do affect a person’s ability to perform well. Some make people sluggish. Others have personality changing effects. If an employer believes that it compromises an employees work, then of course, the employer should be able to fire that employee. Especially small business carry a huge risk from each employee (e.g.,small businesses are more suceptible to serious damage from minor lawsuits). Employees are agents of the employer, generally, and therefore open employers to lawsuits for the employees actions. Let employers assess risk and act in accordance with their assessment (even if they are wrong).
What if being overweight was incompatible? Or being female? Not white? Believing in a different dude-in-the-sky? A different political party?
While I am for small government, I do believe in protections from any discrimination that does not affect a persons ability to perform the job.
Another logical fallacy.