|
| Thread: No Welfare for Drug Users |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 · «PREV |
|
Fauch
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
|
posted June 09, 2011 08:54 PM |
|
|
|
I've not yet read much from him though. but I had heard a few praises about him.
|
|
Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
|
|
posted June 09, 2011 09:20 PM |
|
Edited by Corribus at 21:21, 09 Jun 2011.
|
@JJ
One more point I'd like to make is that it's impossible to completely separate your "private" life from your "public” life. Trust me, I understand what you're saying and you make some real good, valid points. But like it or not, private life does carry over into your professional life. You can use similar points to yours for a lot of activities. What about a company policy that tracks when you go to bed each night? That sounds like a pretty ridiculous invasion of privacy, because what business is it of your employer’s what time you go to bed? Well, people who stay up late and party are more likely to be tired and have poor job performance, so it could be in a company’s interest to determine who are the partiers and who aren’t. So, what you do in the privacy of your home does unavoidably affect how you perform at work. That's not to say that I think companies should monitor everything you do in your life, including your bedtime, but rather to say that it's a bit unrealistic to suppose that ONLY what you do at the job feeds into your performance at the job, and that a company should never consider any of your behaviors in your private life as a means to choose applicants they want to hire. I mean, should companies be able to look at your performance in college? At prior jobs? Criminal records? What about race, gender, sexual orientation? All of this is stuff that is part of your "private life". Should applications consist of nothing besides your name and date of birth? – also, for that matter, private information.
In addition, for all this talk of workers’ rights, let me ask you – do corporations also not have rights? Why should corporations be required to hire or retain people who may lead to the corporation’s destruction? Doesn’t a corporation have a right to protect its own interests?
@Baron
Quote:
Off the top of my head at 3.30am, the only real problems I could see with drug testing would be using them to hide discriminatory hiring practices (somehow) or exploit current employees under the influence of drugs, legal or otherwise.
Of course that's a possibility, but I don't think companies need to go that far to hire exclusively whites, or males, or rhinos, if that's what they want to do. For one thing, I don't think any ethnic, racial, gender, or sexual orientation group owns the monopoly on drug abuse. I guess you could argue that drug use might be able to hide discriminatory hiring practices against socioeconomic boundaries, but qualifications for jobs in general are already divided across such boundaries, and hirers could use much easier metrics to do this in any case - where you went to school, where you live, and etc. So while it's true drug testing could be exploited in this way, I don't think most company hiring policies are so Machiavellian. More likely is that companies really want to know which of their potential hires are recent drug users, because of all the negative personality attributes associated with habitual drug use. (Also note that companies will often let an applicant offer an explanation if they fail a drug test - it's not an automatic rejection. Furthermore you've got to question the intelligence of someone who uses drugs while he's applying for jobs when he knows he's going to have to take a test.)
Quote:
Corribus you said that the perception of someone being something is almost more important than their actual participation in said activity, right? Isn't that really just a form of personal discrimination?
That's not exactly what I meant.
First of all, let's get beyond our hang-up on the word "discrimination". ANYBODY making a decision about whom to hire for a job has to discriminate in some way. When you weigh the attributes of one applicant against another, you're discriminating. You do this whenever you make any decision. When you chose one person over another, you're discriminating against the person you're rejecting because you like the attributes of the other person better. What we generally don't want to do is overtly make a decision against a person based only on what kind of superficial biological classification we've assigned them to - race, gender, etc. - because as a free society we like to think that we judge people based on who they are specifically rather than based on what we believe other people of similar but largely irrelevant characteristics tend to be. That's an admirable goal, don't get me wrong. But harbor no illusions that we don’t possess a psychology that demands we do it anyway, if only as an inherent and subconscious part of decision making.
Human brains use categorization to more easily process and organize information. Generally speaking, categorization is an efficient means to broadly assign attributes to similar or related objects, but the downside is that overgeneralization can often lead to assigning attributes to objects erroneously. MOST colorful, roundish objects found on trees and plants are fruits, and therefore delicious and edible. But not all of them qualify, because expansive categorizations often leave details and exceptions to the rule behind. (Few mathematical sets overlap exactly, in other words, even though our crude categorization systems usually are built on this convenient assumption.) You can solve this problem by making your categories smaller, at the cost of ease of processing. Taken to an absurd limit, every object has its own category, but then of course there's no point in categories. There's usually a happy medium that balances efficiency with the minimum number of errors.
Ideally, in order to sort through applicants, a hiring manager would have an infinite amount of information about each candidate, and for everything that could be perceived as "negative", the candidate would be allowed to give a full explanation and justification. Unfortunately, for a large body of applicants, this would just take too much time. The hiring manager has to decide, broadly speaking, what kinds of people would make the best applicants. Hard-working, intelligent, well-educated, healthy, whatever. And then the hiring manager has to figure out how to tell, from an application, what biographical factors are most likely to be associated with a candidate that meets their hiring needs. The good news is that, generally speaking, this process works. The bad news is that some people who don’t fit neatly into preformed categories are judged based on something they aren’t. Unfair, maybe, but it’s a reality and if you’re going to indulge in certain behaviors that may leave you vulnerable, you’ll have to accept it as a consequence of free choice.
No, it's obviously not true that every person who uses drugs is a lazy, poor, unethical slob. However, drug users tend to be lazier, poorer, less ethical, and sloppier than non-drug users. This is first of all a perception held by most of society - that is, these are the attributes generally attached to the category "drug user". There are probably also more rigorous scientific assessments to lend support to this generalization as well. Ultimately, whether it is right or not is immaterial, but given that it is in a company’s interests to hire the best candidates, if this process was based on erroneous perceptions it would have been discovered long ago and abandoned by the private sector. (Although you can never tell – sometimes personal biases cause us to make bad decisions – but there’s a difference between drug use and skin color.)
Another critical factor is how easy it is to determine what category a person belongs to. It's very easy to sort people according to current drug user and not a current drug user with a simple drug test. Not so easy to do for other categorizations that may or may not provide the same sort of information, which is why drug testing is popular (it's cheap, quick, reliable, objective). Of course it would be preferable to narrow down the classification system by frequency of drug use, kind of drug use, where the person was when he did the drugs, etc., but that's just not practical. Even more preferable would be to go and talk to each person who falls into the "drug user" category and find the specifics behind their drug use, because not everyone who fits into the category of "drug user" also fits into the categories of "lazy, poor, unethical and slob", such as they are. But again, that's just not practical.
Discrimination as a function of associations between broad categories is impossible to avoid, really. Our society no longer condones using racial, ethnic, gender, or sexual orientation classifications as a means of doing this - although to be quite honest the only difference is that one is genetic and outside of one's control and the other is not. (Notable exception here is religion, which is not genetic or outside of one’s control – but then again religion is always a sticky subject. Even so, many companies hire religious people under the condition that they do not observe religious requirements at work, clothing especially. One wonders what JJ and other like-minded individuals feel about that.)
Also, personal attribute classes associated with racial, gender, etc., classes are probably not as often ground in fact - or, at least, these perceptions are contaminated by historical prejudices/biases which make it more difficult to separate fact from fiction. (Not that it would not matter if it was easy to do so, mind you - taboo against racial discrimination would prevent its use even if data existed which showed unequivocally that one race/religion/whatever was more suited to a particular job than another). That said, people use racial and ethnic and religious and sexual profiling anyway - it's unavoidable given the way that the human mind is structured - so even if it isn't an overt practice it still happens at least on a subconscious level and will continue to do so until decisions are made by dice-rolls or computers.
Quote:
JJ's libertarian point is one that I would have thought US citizens would be all about - the right to non-interference. So long as it doesn't affect his work or another person's liberties, an individual should be free to do what he wants in his free time regardless of how it appears.
A clarification, if you will allow me.
You need to distinguish between government and corporate worlds. I'm pretty strongly supportive of non-interference when it comes to govt activity. I loosely identify myself as libertarian, though I don’t usually like to categorize myself for reasons which should now be clear. On the other hand, govt interference is not really what we're talking about at the moment - that is, drug tests for hiring at a private company. I'd be against govt passing a law that requires drug testing for any job application anywhere, because it removes all choice to protect my right to privacy. But if a company decides that it wants to subject me to a drug test as a condition for employment, that doesn't violate my right to privacy unless I voluntarily give that right up. I understand I have the ability to take my business elsewhere, as it were. Note that I’ve already stated that these arguments don’t really work for welfare because gov’t is a public institution, so you see I don’t really condone wide-reaching gov’t interference.
I'll also reiterate that just because you're free to do what you want (within the limits of the law) in your free time, that doesn't mean that what you do in your free time has no consequences. If your drug use destroys your marriage, I doubt you could whine to a judge in your alimony hearing that the whole thing is unfair because you were doing drugs in your free time and the divorce is a breach of your right to privacy. If you voluntarily do drugs, you have to accept consequences to that choice, either in your family life or in your professional life. That might entail missing a job opportunity or getting fired - even if we put the issue of drug tests aside, if your work starts to suffer because of echoes from drug use (lack of concentration, withdraw symptoms, dehydration, lots of sick days, whatever), you can't really expect to convince your boss not to fire you because the drug use was done "on your own time". As I said to JJ above, completely separating your private from professional life is impossible and in the end, if you choose to do certain activities, even if they don't have direct physical consequences, people may associate you with attributes associated with your life choices.
In the end, I'll conclude with the idea that I don't think it's the criminality of drug use that prompts companies to test for drug users, although that may be part of it. It's the fact that establishing who is and who isn't a drug user is perceived to be an easy way to weed out people who are more likely to be problem employees, and drug use is something that is profoundly easy to test for. Of course, as with any machine designed to separate the useful from the useless, sometimes a few grains and seeds inadvertently get missed by the threshing blades.
|
|
JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
|
|
posted June 09, 2011 11:19 PM |
|
|
Corribus, I know, that your post deserves a longer answer, but it's late and I like to get a small answer in.
Your example with a company caring about the sleeping habits. That's exactly it. It's no business of the corp. Because
if they are not satisfied with my performance they can fire me.
However, they have no business to demand that I should do everything possible to be up to my potential best. See that? They cannot demand for me to be perfect - they can demand to get the best that I can do, and if I'm not good enough they have to look for someone who is better.
Now, what my drug test says is completely irrelevant in that regard.
EDIT: Indeed. It was late when I posted that, but that's the gist of it.
When I'm applying for a job, I'm not applying to become son-in-law or something. The company is looking for someone witgh abilities in a certain area, and I have to meet the requirements: necessary education, a certain knowledge, practical experience. There is a goal behind that: I'm supposed to fulfill certain tasks for the company, and the company in turn will pay me for that.
The company, however, has no business in controlling - knowing - how I spend the money I earn or what I do in my private time. The only interesting thing is whether I fulfill my tasks and whether I don't create problems with my colleagues.
The same thing the other way round: I have no way to control WHAT I do; when I help the company developing some terrible weapon, without me knowing it - can I change it? The minute I learn it, I can quit, but I can't know beforehand what may happen when I sign with a specific company.
The drug test says nothing in that regard. I may have any number of potentially harmful habits, including the abuse of legal chemical drugs, and depending on the test, if it's not hair that is tested, infrequent use may not even be detected.
I will agree that there ARE jobs where a drug test makes a lot of sense - but only because using while working or coming already or still stoned to work may cause potential desasters.
That said - are surgeons regularly tested for drugs? Both motive (stress job - most of those are smokers) and opportunity (unlimited supply of best-quality stuff)...
Sure: say you are an engineer, planning a bridge, and you partied on the weekend doing some coke and had a hell of a night, and now it's monday and you have a hangover and make a crucial mistake that will cause the bridge to collapse - 1) these things are safety-controlled, so this shouldn't happen 2) you might simply be down because your wife/husband/friend just left you with the same result.
So what the hell?
As I said, if you hire someone, you hire ABILITIES. But you always hire a human being as well, and human beings are not perfect, drug test or not.
|
|
friendofgunnar
Honorable
Legendary Hero
able to speed up time
|
|
posted June 10, 2011 08:51 AM |
|
|
Alright JJ, let me clue you in. I'll start with some personal experiences.
Back when I was starting out in the world on my own I was poor as poor can be. I lived in places that poor people lived and ate at places that poor people ate and I got to know them, generally speaking, quite well.
- I used to to walk to work every day through a crappy part of town. It was strange I noticed how at the beginning of every month there were always people milling about on the corners asking me if I like to get high. It all became clearer later on when I found out that social security checks came out at the beginning of the month. I found a remarkable parallel several years later when I was watching "The Wire", and watched the scenes where the dealers all across the city had lines queing up to buy drugs at the beginning of the month after the checks came out. Quite realistic that show, anybody who hasn't seen it really should.
-In one place I had a downstairs neighbor, a single mom, who had a kid and was getting government assistance. I was hanging out at her place one night while she and a friend were trying ecstasy. Afterwards she made a comment to the effect of "Yep, that's it, I've tried them all". And then she went down and listed all the drugs she'd tried, confirming that she had in fact tried them all. I was agog.
-Different house: one my housemates would disappear every few hours and then reappear as perky as perk can be. Go meth! She was on multiple forms of public assistance, mostly having to do with her having a few screws loose and being unable to keep a job.
-Same house, another one of the housemates was a heroin addict, used to shoot it right in his butt. He was the only heavy user I've met who actually paid for his drugs with a job. I remember him jokingly telling me about how he used to cheat the unemployment system by working just long enough to qualify for unemployment benefits (18 months) and then cashing out for the next six months.
-Another housemate in the same house was a regular user of the light drugs and occasionally dabbled in the hard drugs as well. He knew all the inns and outs about how to get money from the government. He hadn't used most of the techniques though, mostly because in his younger days he found petty crime a more exciting way to make money and then in his later days he had a relatively good job. I still remember the conversation we had where he proudly recalled the way that he found a way to avoid paying taxes one year.
-On more than one occasion I've had conversations with beggars and found out that they were getting SSI, housing assistance, and/or food stamps. So why would they need to beg? Liquor, cigarettes, beer, liquor, pot, heroin, meth, liquor.
-I've never met anybody in my life that was getting any kind of direct cash assistance that wasn't a tobacco addict or drug user of some type.
-Another thing I've heard of several times, though indirectly, is the food stamp scam where people go to a corrupt grocer and pretend to buy groceries. They get 50 cents cash for every dollar they pretend to spend. And what do they spend that money on? Whatever it takes to get high. Just google "food stamp fraud" and you'll find 1,600,000 results to peruse.
-In our state after welfare benefits were shifted to a card based system they were able to track which atms people withdrew the cash from. Not surprisingly they found that a large chunk of the cash was being taken out of ATMS at strip clubs, tattoo parlors, casinos, gun shops and taverns. In one year alone 2 million was taken out of casino ATMs.
-I've had numerous conversations with people at the very bottom end of the social scale. Not only do they know the techniques for how to apply for and get cash assistance, but they love to share the techniques as well. I don't even need to ask them, they just offer it up. For anybody from a middle class background, such as myself, this lack of reticence is somewhat shocking.
-The truth is that the farther you get down on the social scale the more drug use you'll find and also the more "hard" the drugs become. It's the same thing with government assistance. The farther down on the social scale you get the more you'll find people that know how to milk the system. Is anybody really naive to think that these two spheres of anti-social behaviour don't intersect at all? Casual marijuana users aside, I've never met a single druggee that wasn't an accomplished parasite of some sort.
This issue has always been (one of) the political left's achilles heel. When conservatives try to appeal to suburban swing voters they get a ton of mileage out of the way that the left aids and abets parasitic behaviour. And lest anybody thinks I am a conservative I'll state for the record that I think drug prohibition is simultaneously the most expensive, wasteful, and ineffective way to control the problem.
|
|
JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
|
|
posted June 10, 2011 09:09 AM |
|
|
I don't understand your point.
Since we agree about drug prohibition the way it is done is nonsense for a number of reasons, there is no reason to concentrate on the victims.
A person gets welfare when that person qualifies. The qualifications depends on the situation of the person. Welfare isn't meant to get fat and complacent of it - it's meant to deliver the absolute bare minimum of living, so people do not starve to death, need to resort to crime and so on.
If a person uses part of this minimum to get drugs, if the drugs are legal - alcohol, tobacco - the person has any right to do so.
If the person spends part of the money on illegal drugs, then that person's problem is - from their own perspective - that the money isn't enough. The combination of additional need for money and criminal activity will eventually lead to a forced detox in some prison cell anyway.
There are those cases - mothers or families with a drug habit - where children will be in a really bad position and may be harmed due to this.
However, this won't come as a surprise.
As I said in numerous posts - the law needs some kind of evidence to do something. It is against the law to "mass-screen" people. It is NOT against the law, if there is evidence to screen SPECIFIC people. You can't just start search anyone's home. However, if there is evidence, if there is something suspicious, you can get a search warrant.
This is true for drug testing as well. If you find EVIDENCE with someone who gets welfare for illegal drug abuse - by all means, TEST THEM and look into their situation.
No evidence - no test.
|
|
Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
|
|
posted June 10, 2011 03:01 PM |
|
|
@JJ
Just a couple of quick points.
Regarding what a company is "interested in" when it comes to deciding whom to hire:
Quote:
The only interesting thing is whether I fulfill my tasks and whether I don't create problems with my colleagues.
Not quite. The only interesting thing is whether I am likely to fulfill my tasks and whether I am unlikely to create problems with my colleague.
When you apply for a job, the company doesn't know anything about you. You haven't done any work yet for them, so they have to take your application and try to predict whether you will be productive or whether you won't be productive. No, humans aren't perfect, but some are closer to perfect than others, and when a company has 100 applications for a single position, the company must use some way to determine which applicants are better suited for the job than others.
Let me pose a question to you. Clearly, you don't think drug testing is an acceptible means of making this determination. So, in your opinion, what criteria SHOULD or COULD a company use to determine who they should hire and who they shouldnot hire?
Quote:
It is against the law to "mass-screen" people.
What law would that be, exactly?
|
|
JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
|
|
posted June 10, 2011 03:38 PM |
|
|
I cited that law. The law FORBIDS explicitely to, umm, INVESTIGATE a specific person without EVIDENCE that would suggest a SUSPICION (that the person is guilty of a crime and illegal drug use IS a crime).
You can't for example go to a house and search it prophylactically. You need a warrant. You get it from a judge, when you present valid EVIDENCE that would suggest something.
For the same reason you can't just pick a crowd and call for a drug test - technically and legally it would be the same than a mass search.
Quote:
Let me pose a question to you. Clearly, you don't think drug testing is an acceptible means of making this determination. So, in your opinion, what criteria SHOULD or COULD a company use to determine who they should hire and who they shouldnot hire?
Companies did hire people already in pre-drug-testing-time, didn't they? Usually they would have a staff manager (or more than one), and, surprise, there has been a time when the staff manager would be paid for, amongst others, hiring capable (or the RIGHT) people.
Obviously, a drug test is supposed to eliminate people from the equation, which wouldn't help much. Actually, and I'm sorry to say so, it might even be counter-productive to eliminate everyone who's positive on anything because MILD "drug" (in the furthest sense) use could be considered as evidence for sociability, as opposed to completely CLEAN people, which might be an evidence for a certain dryness, being unimaginative and so on (of course that depends on what dugs are actually tested; if you would test only real hard stuff, Heroin, Cocaine, PCP, Extasy, Meth and so on, this would of course NOT be so).
In short - a staff manager worth his money should SEE whether the guy applying for a job is a junkie. If not, he has the wrong job. If the staff manager IS worth his money, his error quota should be fairly low, drug test or not.
Think about this: a drug test, if positive, makes you extortionable, doesn't it? A positive tested person is VULNERABLE. "I might have a job for you..." Can you really say no, if they ask you to do this or that?
Don't you see the damage that can be done with these kinds of things? "He didn't want to do a drug test!" Is that now already some kind of evidence that you may have a drug problem? Think about it: if the police asks you, "Would you be prepared to make a drug test?" and you say "No", is that grounds enough to say, "Hey, that's suspicious, if you were clean, you'd do it - enough evidence for suspicion to ORDER you to do one!"
Now take that a step further: "Could we search your flat?" "NO!" "Well, that's suspicious, if you had nothing to hide, you would certainly allow it, so we'll come back with a search warrant!"
See where that leads? It's simple PRESSURE. SUPPOSEDLY you are NOT GUILTY until proven otherwise. THIS, however means, you are GUILTY until proven you are not.
|
|
bLiZzArdbOY
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Nerf Herder
|
|
posted June 10, 2011 05:36 PM |
|
|
This is rather contrary to the entire idea of risk analysis. Is it also against the law to *gasp* investigate a person's credit history when they apply for a mortgage on a home? When they apply for a loan to start a business? When the bank wants to know your ground plan for how you're going to get started and what you're going to do with your business? Or for that matter, should universities have no right to set standards for people interested to study at them? A person's academic prowess certainly isn't public information either (or it doesn't have to be). They're essentially telling you to sit down at a desk and then they pick your brain by making you answer a whole host of questions and possibly composing essays and who knows what else. But most students don't sit there and pout or draw a penis on the paper. Most of them comply and take the test.
The same principle applies to anybody applying for a job. The purpose of the application process is risk analysis. They look at certain criteria and measure how much of a risk/liability a person is vs. how much of an asset they are. You seem to think that because the information doesn't infallibly prove that they would make a good employee or not means that they have no right to investigate them in the first place, but under such impossibly rigid standards, I'd hate to know what your opinions are toward any other form of risk analysis under the sun. A drug test doesn't prove that a person will make a good or bad employee anymore than a person's college records and work history does. It merely implies, and employers should have the right to analyze such information and hire the person that they feel is best suited for the job. Employers are not villains and it's a shame that so many people mistreat them with such thinking.
____________
"Folks, I don't trust children. They're here to replace us."
|
|
Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
|
|
posted June 10, 2011 05:50 PM |
|
|
Quote:
I cited that law. The law FORBIDS explicitely to, umm, INVESTIGATE a specific person without EVIDENCE that would suggest a SUSPICION (that the person is guilty of a crime and illegal drug use IS a crime).
I'm not aware of any law that forbids a private citizen or entity from asking another private citizen or entity to voluntarily submit himself, herself or itself to a drug test. A warrant doesn't even apply to a private citizen - it applies to a government or law enforcement officer.
Quote:
Companies did hire people already in pre-drug-testing-time, didn't they?
What does that have to do with anything? Companies hired people before internet searches were available, so should companies not use the internet to do applications online or perform background searches? Companies use technology all the time to make the hiring process more efficient, streamlined, and more effective at finding suitable candidates. Total logic fail there, JJ.
Quote:
Think about this: a drug test, if positive, makes you extortionable, doesn't it? A positive tested person is VULNERABLE. "I might have a job for you..." Can you really say no, if they ask you to do this or that?
Another logic fail. Because something makes an illegal or unethical activity possible does not make that something illegal or unethical itself. Putting information about yourself on Facebook might make you extortionable or vulnerable to blackmail. Ergo, Facebook should be illegal.
Quote:
Think about it: if the police asks you, "Would you be prepared to make a drug test?" and you say "No", is that grounds enough to say, "Hey, that's suspicious, if you were clean, you'd do it - enough evidence for suspicion to ORDER you to do one!"
Now take that a step further: "Could we search your flat?" "NO!" "Well, that's suspicious, if you had nothing to hide, you would certainly allow it, so we'll come back with a search warrant!"
First, the police are law enforcement officers and a company is a private entity, so it's not the same. Let's keep these two ideas separate because you're constantly confusing one with the other. Second, your description is not the way the law in the US, at least, works. Fifth ammendment prevents self-incrimination; refusal to answer questions is not evidence of guilt under US law, and in any case no judge would ever issue a warrant on such a basis.
|
|
JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
|
|
posted June 10, 2011 07:26 PM |
|
|
@ BB
Quote:
This is rather contrary to the entire idea of risk analysis. Is it also against the law to *gasp* investigate a person's credit history when they apply for a mortgage on a home? When they apply for a loan to start a business? When the bank wants to know your ground plan for how you're going to get started and what you're going to do with your business? Or for that matter, should universities have no right to set standards for people interested to study at them? A person's academic prowess certainly isn't public information either (or it doesn't have to be). They're essentially telling you to sit down at a desk and then they pick your brain by making you answer a whole host of questions and possibly composing essays and who knows what else. But most students don't sit there and pout or draw a penis on the paper. Most of them comply and take the test.
Those test are quite different than a drug test. A drug test is first and foremost CHECKING ON CRIMINAL AND RECREATIONAL ACTIVITIES of a certain kind. That test is a violation of privacy,
Risk analysis? How far are they supposed to go? Pregnancy test? Frequency of sexul activity to check the pregnancy risk for a female employee? Complete health scan to analyse the risk of future sickness days? Complete declaration of the financial situation?
There is a limit here, and a drug test is beyond that limit. If you don't believe that, debate with the Europeans because they seem to agree with me.
Quote:
A drug test doesn't prove that a person will make a good or bad employee anymore than a person's college records and work history does. It merely implies...
It implies nothing.
@ Cor
Quote:
I'm not aware of any law that forbids a private citizen or entity from asking another private citizen or entity to voluntarily submit himself, herself or itself to a drug test. A warrant doesn't even apply to a private citizen - it applies to a government or law enforcement officer.
Well, ASKING isn't forbidden to anyone. That wasn't the question. Just don't expect to get an answer.
The question and the whole point are the repercussions of not answering. Can the police IMPLY that a failure to ask constitutes a sufficient suspicion to warrant a warrant?
Now for an employer. Is it correct, when an employer makes it mandatory for a potential employee to have sex with him, and if that is declined to not hire the person in question for that reason? Think well, because there is no difference between that and demanding a drug test.
Quote:
Quote:
Companies did hire people already in pre-drug-testing-time, didn't they?
What does that have to do with anything? [long rant] Total logic fail there, JJ.
Bit disappointing there, that you take the first sentence of an explanation and start a rant about it, ending with "logic fail".
I'm no staff manager, so the initial question of "what the companies should do" how to find their staff", isn't a question I feel inclined to answer. How am I supposed to know? I'm not paid for that, so why should I care?
They did it without drug tests, and for all I know they did fine. It's nice when they try to find more ways to ascertain things, but obviously there have to be limits. Laws's purpose is not, to make it easy for companies to find the right work slave.
Quote:
Another logic fail. Because something makes an illegal or unethical activity possible does not make that something illegal or unethical itself. Putting information about yourself on Facebook might make you extortionable or vulnerable to blackmail. Ergo, Facebook should be illegal.
Logic fail is with you, because - again - you miss the point. Since the information CAN be used in an illegal way against me, I shouldn't have to give them TO GET A JOB. That's what is actually behind that.
Quote:
Quote:
Think about it: if the police asks you, "Would you be prepared to make a drug test?" and you say "No", is that grounds enough to say, "Hey, that's suspicious, if you were clean, you'd do it - enough evidence for suspicion to ORDER you to do one!"
Now take that a step further: "Could we search your flat?" "NO!" "Well, that's suspicious, if you had nothing to hide, you would certainly allow it, so we'll come back with a search warrant!"
[/quote}
First, the police are law enforcement officers and a company is a private entity, so it's not the same. Let's keep these two ideas separate because you're constantly confusing one with the other. Second, your description is not the way the law in the US, at least, works. Fifth ammendment prevents self-incrimination; refusal to answer questions is not evidence of guilt under US law, and in any case no judge would ever issue a warrant on such a basis.
Except that the actual thread is dealing with what the government does, and I see no reason not to go back to it, as long as your stance on it is not clear.
No, I'm not confusing things - no the law in the US or anywhere else isn't so.
But you seem to think I'm a complete idiot. What you want to do here is pretty clear: you want to ascertain that private companies have the right to demand a drug test. Then, if you have ascertained that - which you won't - you will come back to the governmemnt, saying the situation is the same: government is OFFERING something, same thing as company, same right to demand. People can always reject.
That's why I'm arguing on both levels - they are linked anyway.
|
|
Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
|
|
posted June 10, 2011 08:07 PM |
|
Edited by Corribus at 20:09, 10 Jun 2011.
|
JJ
Quote:
But you seem to think I'm a complete idiot. What you want to do here is pretty clear: you want to ascertain that private companies have the right to demand a drug test. Then, if you have ascertained that - which you won't - you will come back to the governmemnt, saying the situation is the same: government is OFFERING something, same thing as company, same right to demand. People can always reject.
First, I don't think you're an idiot, complete or partial. In fact I think you raise a lot of good points, which I've already remarked once before.
That said, you're dead wrong here - I'm not trying to use private company practices as a springboard to make ANY conclusions about drug testing for welfare or any government programs. In fact, I have already stated multiple times that I don't think arguments in support of (voluntary) drug-testing for employment applications work in the case of welfare, for very obvious reasons - many of which you've pointed out.
Cases in point (emphasis added):
Quote:
Of course, this [discussion about hiring practices] is all tangential to the issue of welfare. The difference is that while we probably could all agree that nobody has a right to a job at a bank, due to the fact that the government is public and ostensibly we all pay into it, some people feel that we are entitled to welfare no matter who we are or what our lifestyle is. I don't think it's possible to directly compare the hiring practices of a private company to welfare - welfare isn't a job, after all, and government check-hander-outers don't have to worry about the same kinds of things a hiring manager at a bank does. So the arguments above [in support of drug testing by companies] don't really hold water for the case of welfare.
And:
Quote:
You need to distinguish between government and corporate worlds. I'm pretty strongly supportive of non-interference when it comes to govt activity. I loosely identify myself as libertarian, though I don’t usually like to categorize myself for reasons which should now be clear. On the other hand, govt interference is not really what we're talking about at the moment - that is, drug tests for hiring at a private company. I'd be against govt passing a law that requires drug testing for any job application anywhere, because it removes all choice to protect my right to privacy. But if a company decides that it wants to subject me to a drug test as a condition for employment, that doesn't violate my right to privacy unless I voluntarily give that right up. I understand I have the ability to take my business elsewhere, as it were. Note that I’ve already stated that [pro-corporate-drug-testing-policy] arguments don’t really work for welfare because gov’t is a public institution, so you see I don’t really condone wide-reaching gov’t interference.
Finally, JJ, you say:
Quote:
That's why I'm arguing on both levels - they are linked anyway.
Arguing them both is fine, but just as arguments in favor of drug tests for job hiring at private companies don't really work for welfare, arguments against drug testing for welfare and govt programs don't really work for private companies. You need to distinguish which you're talking about and when, because if you don't then most of your arguments come across as fallacious.
@BB
What you say about risk analysis is right on. 
|
|
JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
|
|
posted June 10, 2011 09:05 PM |
|
|
In that case, I'm sorry when I misinterpreted your stance.
However, I still disagree about the private companies thing. A private company has no right whatsoever, to demand EVERYTHING it wants, even if legal, under threat of immediately rejecting an applier if the demand is not fulfilled.
That should be obvious. For example, you cannot demand from an applier to strip before she gets the job - except if the application is for a job, nakedness, stripping or the natural body is somehow RELEVANT for.
DIRECTLY RELEVANT, mind you. There must obviously be a limit what a company can legally demand from an applier that, in the case of a rejection would have negative consequences.
This could be seen as the dividing line between trying to get information for a "risk analysis" and extort an applier to do or offer extraordinary things that have no direct connection to the job offered (otherwise we would be slaves of the employer).
I think that we all agree about this point - the thing we disagree about is probably where that line should be drawn and whether a drug test is this or that side of the line.
So here comes a question for YOU:
From a risk analysis point of view, as a boss I would want to have a look into the records of any psychiatrist an applier is going to.
Should I have the right as a normal employer - for example when I offer a job as a secretary - to demand from appliers to allow insight into their psychological records, if there are any, and should I be allowed to reject an applier when the applier doesn't want to allow that?
|
|
Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
|
|
posted June 10, 2011 09:37 PM |
|
|
Quote:
I think that we all agree about this point - the thing we disagree about is probably where that line should be drawn and whether a drug test is this or that side of the line.
Right, I think that is pretty accurate. Clearly, you've got to draw a line somewhere, if only as a matter of practicality. For that reason, I don't think slippery slope arguments really work here. I think you've got to pick a reasonable line and stick with it.
Quote:
From a risk analysis point of view, as a boss I would want to have a look into the records of any psychiatrist an applier is going to.
Should I have the right as a normal employer - for example when I offer a job as a secretary - to demand from appliers to allow insight into their psychological records, if there are any, and should I be allowed to reject an applier when the applier doesn't want to allow that?
Nice question.
On the one hand, I'm inclined to say that an employer has the right to ask for anything, just as the applicant has the right to refuse.
On the other hand, there are laws or at least conventions, I believe, that prevent an employer from discriminating on the basis of certain factors, one of which is physical disabilities. I'll be honest and say I don't know exactly what all those laws are. (Keep in mind also that the market itself exerts a sort of pressure here - if it were to become known that a company refuses to hire people of a certain race or handicapped people, this would itself be damaging to the company because of public sensitivity to racism and the needs of the handicapped.) The reason for these laws is that factors like race or health are really not in a person's immediate control - they can't help that they can't walk, after all. I should note that I am not aware of the extent to which these laws or guidelines apply to mental illness.
I should also note that it may be ok to discriminate against people with handicaps in certain situations. You obviously can't hire a paraplegic as a mason, and I'm not sure you'd want a person with bipolar disorder working as an FBI interrogator.
In any case, this question is clearly probing at where I draw my line. So my line, more or less, is drawn at private information which may or may not directly influence a person's performance at a certain job and which relates to issues of voluntary or lifestyle choices. Of course, this may not be where the law draws the line, and my line is pretty blurry admittedly. The difference between drug use and metal disability (or whatever you want to call it) is that drug use is a voluntary (and sometimes illegal) activity and metal disability is a personal trait which is not voluntary and can often be controlled with medication. I fully recognize that mental disability can also be a risk factor and should, in principle, feed into a risk analysis. So I understand that on a completely logical level I might be in some sticky mud here - but as I said before you've got to draw a line somewhere and any line you draw can probably be argued against with some sound logic.
Also note that any intelligent company will understand that while it may perfectly kosher to ask for certain information, doing so may open them up to lawsuits down the line. That is, while it may be perfectly legal to ask a person to voluntarily provide information about their physical or mental health, if that person is ultimately rejected for the job, the fact that the company asked for this information may in itself be grounds for a successful lawsuit later on - even if that information wasn't the basis for why the person was passed over. After all, it's hard to prove that you failed to hire someone for a particular reason and I could see juries being sympathetic to a lawsuit like this. (Being passed for a job because you fail a drug test isn't likely to be the basis of a good lawsuit, on the other hand, so the actual line as to what companies actually do likely is determined by factors outside of privacy ethics).
|
|
JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
|
|
posted June 10, 2011 11:13 PM |
|
|
I think, there is an important point missing.
Just for the record: You point to a difference: mental illness, voluntary vice, but you could drug abuse easily see as mental illness as well.
But what is more important here is looking at what those two things have in common. We may assume that it may make sense, from a company's point of view, to ascertain that an applier isn't addicted to a certain FEW drugs - having a junkie as an employee might pose some risks indeed - while it may make as much sense to ascertain that an applier doesn't suffer from a certain few mental illnesses.
There is much more information gained, though.
If you make a drug test, you will get information about all drugs tested which can be a lot.
If you look at the psychiatrists records you will get all informations, not only those answering the relevant questions.
In my opinion the important question now is this:
Is the answer to the few points that may halfway objectively and reasonably spoken be indeed of interest for the employer worth the information the applier is asked to share and is this interest of the employer worth more than the right of privacy?
In other words, what would you easier agree to? A drug test or a test for Cocaine and Heroin
|
|
Shyranis
Promising
Supreme Hero
|
|
posted August 29, 2011 03:39 PM |
|
|
Bad News for Florida.
Like JJ Specuated, only 2% of people have failed their drug tests, leaving the State of Florida on the hook for all of the others.
Quote:
Having begun the drug testing in mid-July, the state Department of Children and Families is still tabulating the results. But at least 1,000 welfare applicants took the drug tests through mid-August, according to the department, which expects at least 1,500 applicants to take the tests monthly.
So far, they say, about 2 percent of applicants are failing the test; another 2 percent are not completing the application process, for reasons unspecified.
Cost of the tests averages about $30. Assuming that 1,000 to 1,500 applicants take the test every month, the state will owe about $28,800-$43,200 monthly in reimbursements to those who test drug-free.
That compares with roughly $32,200-$48,200 the state may save on one month's worth of rejected applicants.
The savings assume that 20 to 30 people -- 2 percent of 1,000 to 1,500 tested -- fail the drug test every month. On average, a welfare recipient costs the state $134 in monthly benefits, which the rejected applicants won't get, saving the state $2,680-$3,350 per month.
But since one failed test disqualifies an applicant for a full year's worth of benefits, the state could save $32,200-$48,200 annually on the applicants rejected in a single month.
Net savings to the state -- $3,400 to $8,200 annually on one month's worth of rejected applicants. Over 12 months, the money saved on all rejected applicants would add up to $40,800-$98,400 for the cash assistance program that state analysts have predicted will cost $178 million this fiscal year.
Actual savings will vary, however, since not all of the applicants denied benefits might have actually collected them for the full year. Under certain circumstances, applicants who failed their drug test can reapply for benefits after six months.
What's worse is the Governor who implemented this (Rick Scott) owned the clinics hired to perform this testing (he got around Florida law by giving the company to his wife instead, but the conflict was still obvious and he eventually caved). So he sold the company in April, fortunately before the manditory testing laws that he had been pushing were started. The mandatory state worker tests went into effect right after.
Quote:
Selling all the shares would free him from political problems related to the company, an ethics expert said.
"This sale obviously takes the question off the table in terms of the conflict," said Kenneth Gross, a Washington, D.C., lawyer.
Scott had appeared to satisfy state law when he transferred his shares of the company a few days before he took office to a fund in his wife's name, the Frances Annette Scott Revocable Trust. But political pressure from Solantic has weighed on Scott since last year, when his Republican primary opponent made the company a campaign issue.
So the state is sadly paying more to play big brother than it is saving.
Too bad.
Oh, and the governor despite bashing universal healthcare is on it, paying only >400$ per year to cover his whole family. He's an avowed hypocrite. Like nearly all politicians, so no surprise there.
____________
Youtube has terminated my account without reason.
Please express why it should be reinstated on
Twitter.
|
|
TheBaron
Promising
Known Hero
dreamer of dreams
|
|
posted August 30, 2011 03:39 AM |
|
|
I think this goes to show how easily we're twisted by politicians to see particular segments of society in a certain way. In this case, it's welfare recipients being drug users, which was pushed so a dodgey governor could nail a contract. I guess it was 2 birds with 1 stone for him, pay less welfare and make money off the testing. Nice.
____________
"My favorite" - Jean-
Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg.
|
|
moonlith
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
If all else fails, use Fiyah!
|
|
posted September 05, 2011 03:04 PM |
|
|
Quote:
Of course many of the dems in Florida oppose the law since it would result in fewer dem voters, because everyone who votes democrat is a money-leecher.
Quote:
As people got cleaned up and moved on to productive lives they would no longer be dependent on welfare, thus no longer slaves of the dem party, because everyone who votes democrat is a druggie who leeches on the state.
Quote:
I would fully support random drug tests of Congress, the White House, and judges. Druggies need to be kicked out of office instead of up there making policies while stoned, because just like everyone who consumes alcohol, they are always drunk while on the job.
Elodin's baseless and cold-hearted, immature jabs no longer surprise me. But what DOES baffle me is that dispite his posts being filled with such assumptuous and childish remarks, people STILL seem to take him serious.
Quote:
After all, without God morality is only a matter of personal opinion.
It's called reality.
Quote:
Just because people pay taxes does not mean they have a right to state assistance.
Because forcing people to choose between starvation or criminality when they can't find a job or can't pay medical care is totally the better alternative in a civilised society.
|
| |
|
|
