OVERDOSING ON THE JOB
How the drug abuse crisis in U.S. is spilling into the workplace
WASHINGTON At Philip Tulkoff’s food-processing plant in Baltimore, machines grind tough horseradish roots into purée. “If you put your arm in the wrong place,” the owner says, “and you’re not paying attention, it’s going to pull you in.” It’s not a good place to be intoxicated.
Drug abuse in the workforce is a growing challenge for American business. While economists have paid more attention to the opioid epidemic’s role in keeping people out of work, about two-thirds of those who report misusing painrelievers are on the payroll. In the factory or office, such employees can be a drag on productivity, one of the U.S. economy’s sore spots. In the worst case, they can endanger themselves and their colleagues.
That’s why Tulkoff practices zero-tolerance. One randomly chosen employee gets tested every month, “and we’re gonna move it to two.” The costs mount up: He has to hire a third-party company to select the worker, and pay the clinic to conduct tests. Money is wasted training workers who subsequently drop out when they fail the screening.
Then there are the added care costs. Castlight Health, a benefits platform, estimates that opioid abusers cost employers nearly twice as much in health-care expenses as their clean co-workers — an extra US$8,600 a year.
It’s no wonder that not every boss is as rigorous as Tulkoff. “I know people who’ve said, ‘I can’t do it, I would lose too many people’,” he says.
At the moment, 57 per cent of employers say they perform drug tests, according to the National Safety Council. Out of those, more than 40 per cent don’t screen for synthetic opioids like oxycodone — among the most widely abused narcotics, and one of the substances that new federal rules are targeting.
Starting next month, many federal government employees who take drug tests will have to submit to a more extensive screening — one response to a spiralling crisis. Opioids killed about 33,000 Americans in 2015, more than any other year on record. Private companies aren’t obliged to follow Washington’s lead, but in such areas they often do.
Factories, with their heavy machinery, are where drug-abusing workers can do the most immediate harm to themselves and their colleagues. Even there, employers are tempted to look the other way, according to Mike Galiazzo, president of the Regional Manufacturing Institute of Maryland.
“I have heard manufacturers over the years say, ‘We wish we didn’t have to test for drugs,’ because they lose money when they can’t fill those positions,’’ he said.
Hiring is becoming tougher in any case. While the economy has steadily added jobs since the financial crisis ended, the available pool of workers hasn’t expanded to match.
The share of working-age Americans in the labour market is stuck at about 63 per cent, down more than four per centage points since 2000 — the same period in which the opioid epidemic took off. There’s an “extreme shortage of skilled workers,’’ Galiazzo says.
Drugs are probably at least partly to blame for that, too. There’s a growing consensus among economists that opioid abuse has contributed to the shrinking workforce. Fed Chair Janet Yellen has flagged the issue. Princeton’s Alan Krueger estimates that drugs may account for one-fifth of the drop among men.
For businesses, the labour squeeze plus the opioid crisis are making it especially hard to expand quickly when they get new orders, says Drew Greenblatt, owner and president of Marlin Steel Wire Products LLC in Baltimore, which makes industrialstrength metal baskets used in factories. “We just nailed a huge job and we need to hire three people,’’ he said. “We’re banging our heads against the wall.’’