By Sarah PlummerRegister-Herald Reporter
Raleigh County School’s new Pre-employment, Post-offer Drug Test Program is already ensuring drug-free hires, reported schools Safety Director Jennifer Colvin at Thursday’s meeting of the board of education.
During November, the first month testing was implemented, two out of 30 potential employees failed the urine test. In December, one out of 14 failed, or nearly 7 percent across both months.
Personnel Director Dr. Emily Meadows noted that an additional three potential employees offered a job refused to take the test within the time restrictions.
Superintendent James Brown extrapolated that if 7 percent of employees already hired could not pass a drug test there could be around 110 substance abusers in a county with 16,000 personnel.
Colvin explained that substance abuse is one often-overlooked element that can drastically affect workers’ comp claims and insurance premiums.
She said that according to Department of Labor statistics, drug use in the workplace costs employers between $75 billion and $100 billion annually in lost time, accidents, health care and workers; compensation expenses.
In addition, she said 65 percent of all accidents on the job are directly related to alcohol or drug use and substance abusers are absent from work three times more often.
Substance abusers are also six times more likely to file a workers’ comp claim and more likely to be in conflict with others at work, she added.
“We really wanted to be proactive and do this testing before someone becomes one of our employees. For us, when an employee is absent, we have to call in a substitute and this is additional cost and hardship.” Colvin said. “We put this policy in place because we thought we would see some numbers come back and we have.”
Moving forward Colvin said the county will be providing Reasonable Suspicion Training for administrators and directors.
Currently bus drivers must submit to a drug test after an accident, but drug testing will become mandatory for all employees who have an accident that needs medical assistance.
Raleigh County is one of only three counties in the state that requires pre-employment drug testing. Wyoming and Kanawha also require this type of test.
All testing in Raleigh County is being done through On Site In Home Drug Testing in Beckley. Owner DeWitt McKinney said he is “very happy to be working with Raleigh County Schools and looks forward to a long and positive working relationship.”
http://www.register-herald.com/todaysfrontpage/x1303497482/Raleigh-County-School-s-drug-test-program-showing-results
