Drug testing keeping many from finding jobs
Firms requiring such tests went from 50% to 90%, recruiter says.
Employers throughout southwest Ohio are looking for an elusive category of potential employees: People who can pass a drug test.
Nationwide, the percentage of workers who fail on-the-job drug tests has grown to the highest rate in more than a decade at 4.2 percent, according to the New Jersey-based workplace drug testing firm Quest Diagnostics.
The company said Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin have seen positive tests for heroin decline in recent years, but positive tests for methamphetamine use increased by 167 percent between 2013 and 2017.
The same study, based on 10 million drug tests nationwide, also found an increased number of workers tested positive for marijuana in states where recreational marijuana was legalized.
Company owners like Steve Staub of Staub Manufactur- ing Solutions have seen the available pool of qualified job candidates shrink as the economy improves and the drug crisis grows worse.
“We have people apply, and we ask, ‘Can you pass a drug test?’ They say, ‘No, not right now. Can you give me a month or so? Maybe I can,’” Staub said.
Standing on the shop floor, surrounded by busy employ- ees working at metal fabricat- ing machines, Staub said busi- ness is good and the demand for new employees is great. He stressed that drug testing at his company and in other industries is driven by the focus on job safety.
“We want to operate in a safe environment. We want to go home to our family who we love every night. We do not want to have any kind of an accident or have anybody get hurt. Trucking, manu- facturing, construction all have certain inherent dangers with them, and if you are not drug-free or alcohol-free there could be potential haz- ards,” Staub said.
Job recruiters in the region have seen more employers begin drug testing appli- cants even for office jobs. Jeff Noble, CEO of Noble Staffing Solutions, said in recent years the number of firms requiring a drug test has gone from 50 percent to about 90 percent.
For workers who fail a drug test on the job or are fired for failing take it, it can have long range effects on them. Mindi Harris, 33, had a good office job and was moving up in the company when a mandatory drug test derailed her career and her life. She had suffered from Crohn’s disease at an early age and was placed on a heavy schedule of pain pills. “They put me on morphine 60s. They put me on Percocet 10s and fentanyl patches. And I’m an 18-year-old kid,” Harris said.
Harris, a Union native who still lives near her family there, developed an addiction to pain pills but could function on the job. Then after four years of employment came a mandatory drug test at work.
“They say, ‘OK, drug-test time.’ And at that point I’m in active addiction. So I freak out,” Harris said.
She refused to take the test and said when she was fired she spiraled out of control.
“My addiction kind of took off, and I hit rock bottom,” she said.
In the years that followed, she spent time in both the county jail and the state prison system for drug-related crimes. That is where she learned from other inmates about heroin.
“When I was in prison, they glorified heroin, and they glorified the needle. They said if you like pills, you would love heroin. So I tried it, and I loved it,” Harris said.
Harris figures once she was released from prison she came close to dying 17 times and was given six doses of the heroin antidote Narcan. Her path to a drug-free life began after an overdose in a gas station bathroom prompted her mother and parole officer to send her to treatment.
What can employers do about the problem?
Staub, facing the growing need for capable, drug-free workers, developed a unique partnership with a local non- profit, Good Shepherd Ministries, which provides programs, housing and support for men in recovery.
“It’s the right thing to do. We always want to help peo- ple in this world, give people a second chance and help people move forward. Now it also helps the business case too because we need people, and there are people avail- able to fill those positions,” Staub said.
Good Shepherd resident Bryan Blackford, a former Honda welder who saw his career derailed by addiction, hopes to work for Staub someday.
“I have to continuously push to improve my situation, my life in every aspect, no matter how discouraging it can be at times. If I could rely solely on myself to be fully independent, it would mean the world to me,” Blackford said.
The house and program manager at Good Shepherd, Shawn Trapp, said the organization has developed a good track record with placing people in recovery.
“My phone rings every other day from people who want employees that can pass drug tests,” Trapp said.
He said companies are learning that drug addiction is a disease and people deserve a second chance.
“So rather than throw them in jail or fire them from work, let’s get them some help and get them back into treatment. And then once they give a lot of these people a second chance, then they are indebted to the company, and they don’t want to fail,” Trapp said.