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A number of companies in South Milwaukee implement drug testing. This is done to maintain an optimal experience for customers and a safe workplace for employees. At the same time, industries that involve manual labor should always implement drug testing to prevent accidents on the job.

However, educational and medical institutions implement drug testing for their own reasons. People who work in these fields often have a large amount of responsibility. There are several industries in South Milwaukee that utilize mandatory drug testing today.

Truck Drivers

One of the sectors that implements drug testing for employees is the commercial trucking industry. There are many trucking companies that are either based in or service the South Milwaukee area. Drivers who are under the influence of drugs such as cocaine and marijuana can pose very serious safety risks to bystanders, other drivers and themselves.

Truck drivers are very important in this community. They transport important goods from one area to another. However, semi trucks are very large. At the same time, they frequently carry hazardous materials such as toxic liquids and fuel.

Commercial truck drivers need to be fully alert at all times. Additionally, they should conform to the transportation standards drafted by the Department of Transportation. A driver who operates under the influence can damage goods, cause accidents and can kill or seriously injure other people.

Mine Workers

Laborers that are working in the mining sector are tasked with using state-of-the-art heavy equipment in a very hazardous environment. At the same time, they have to work overtime and long hours as required. They should also be completely aware of their surroundings at all times.

Mine workers need to be alert to watch for passing vehicles and potentially dangerous machines. However, a mine worker that is under the influence of amphetamines or ecstasy cannot do this. This can cause numerous accidents in the field that could endanger their fellow workers’ lives. At the same time, it has grave consequences for a mining company’s operations. Some of these consequences include the revocation of their mining license and other liability issues.

Education

People who are employed in the education sector such as teachers and assistants should also be drug tested. In this industry, it is very important to keep employees drug free. These professionals work extensively with students on a daily basis. With this, they should set a drug-free example for their pupils.

At the same time, they often deal with people that are incredibly hard to understand such as teenagers and troubled youth. If a teacher cannot live up to the standards that they are holding their pupils to, young people will get a poor quality education.

Additionally, their individualized attention is needed all the time. This is especially true when dealing with small children. An educator cannot adequately pay attention to and teach their students if they are using ecstasy or heroin. This is why teachers should not use illegal substances whether at school or at home.

Construction Companies

Both skilled tradesmen and laborers are often tested for construction work. Their profession often involves using powerful vehicles and hand tools. This equipment is very dangerous if it is handled by a worker that is under the influence of amphetamines. With a number of people working at a site, multiple deaths and injuries can happen if an addicted worker mishandles their equipment. Additionally, the need for precision and accuracy during a construction process makes sobriety vital at all times.

Medical

The medical profession has a very important reason for testing people for licensing, continuing and beginning their employment. In a lot of places, they have very easy access to medications that can be abused. This is particularly true in the case of nurses, doctors and pharmacists.

To prevent the loss of these important medications that can result in legal and financial problems, hospitals and other medical facilities should take steps to keep addicted medical professionals out of the workplace.

Being high on drugs can impair decision making. It can be the main difference between recovery and death of patients in the medical field. By making sure that medical personnel stay away from drugs, patients and co-workers can always count on their abilities and judgment when needed.

Worker’s compensation laws are being modified in states all over the country in order to make sure the people who receive it are the people who deserve it. As a result, companies are being provided with carrots and sticks to make sure that they are watching over their employees and creating safe, healthy, and effective workplaces that do not place employees or the public at risk of injury or death.

The impact of drug use

One of the quickest ways to increase the risk of injury or misfortune in a work environment is to have an environment where employees are actively consuming drugs. Drugs like marijuana, heroin, and amphetamines have detrimental effects on the performance and professionalism of employees and are likely to increase the odds of injury, which would in turn increase the odds of workplace claims.

Here is how the city of Milwaukee and the state of Wisconsin have begun to deal with the problem of drug use in the workplace. Essentially, they are making use of the stick approach to encourage employers to keep their places of work drug free.

The 15 percent penalty

There are penalties for negligence that affect worker’s compensation in Milwaukee. Specifically, if an employer is found to have been under the influence of an illegal drug such as cocaine or ecstasy, or simply under the influence of alcohol, while the employee was injured, the worker’s compensation the employee receives might be reduced by up to 15%. This is possible up to a full reduction of $15,000. In other words, if you’re a worker in Wisconsin and you get injured and file for worker’s compensation, your employer has the right to test you for drug or alcohol use.

If you are found to have such drugs or alcohol in your system close to the time of the accident that led to your worker’s comp claim, you can take a significant hit in the amount of worker’s comp you are able to claim.

This isn’t quite as significant as some states that actually apply penalties to the employer, but it is still significant, and reflects the hard line states and cities are drawing against the use of alcohol and drugs while employed in work settings.

Where does this leave employers?

The question of where this leaves employers is an important one, as even though an employer may not directly face penalties for employees who used drugs at the time of injury, no company wants to have injured employees to begin with.

And the statistics show that employees who are using drugs are more likely to miss work or engage in risky behaviors that make themselves, other workers, or the public at large more likely to suffer injuries or even death.

This clearly opens a company up to other potential issues of liability. As a result, it is clear that employers are left with no other practical option but to begin to pursue drug testing services for their employees.

What are the benefits?

There are a number of benefits to companies enforcing and maintaining a drug free workplace requirement for their employees. The first is simply that it makes the environment safer for everyone involved.

Rather than employees risking their lives while working side by side with other employees who may not have the full possession of their mental faculties, employees can work and experience greater levels of productivity with the knowledge that their coworkers are of sound mind and body, rather than reeling in the highs of this or that illegal substance.

Tips for introducing drug testing policies

When seeking to introduce drug seeking policies, it is best to introduce them directly to employees as well as to solicit the feedback and opinions of employees. Clearly, employers will have the final say when it comes to determining policies, but it is still worth consulting with one’s employees, as this increases the odds that they will comply with whatever decisions are ultimately made.

Employees can also be informed of the benefits of such testing, such as the safety and productivity improvements, as well as the increase in employee morale that is associated with working in an environment that is free from illicit substances.

Alcohol and substance abuse policies have been an important component of human resources departments for several decades now, an often lengthy and extremely significant portion of employee manuals for companies both large and small. Whether you have 3 employees or three thousand, it is vital to make your regulations absolutely clear, easily understood and as effortlessly enforced as possible. It’s wise to spell out exactly what substances your company wants to prohibit the use of, and leave the language open to the addition of more substances as they enter common recreational use. Marijuana, heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines are the substances most often targeted for regulation, although alcohol use can be a concern for many employers, both from a point of view of impairment for work as well as the health concerns chronic use create that must be paid for by insurance.

Although there are movements underway in many states and even to some degree at the federal level to require drug testing in order to receive welfare, food stamp and unemployment benefits, the logistics of enforcement have so far prohibited this from becoming reality. Employers must therefore do all they can to ensure that former employees who should not qualify for unemployment insurance benefits do not receive them. Right now, you can’t force a person to submit to a drug test in order to receive unemployment after they separate from your business, for whatever reason, and neither can the government. What your business can do is direct an employee to submit to a random drug test, and take appropriate action based on the results. Either the employee refuses and is subject to termination, or they submit and test positive for a prohibited substance. In both cases, their employment is ended and they are absolutely ineligible for unemployment in Wisconsin, based on a fully adjudicated case, MacNeil v. Labor&Industry Review Commission. Drug testing is not required, but the consequences for failing a test can be a finding of ineligibility for unemployment benefits.

In order to take full advantage of your ability to object to the payment of unemployment benefits based on the findings of this case, you have to have procedures and policies in place and make sure they are known to all employees. This can be easily accomplished by providing a manual outlining the policies and requiring that an employee sign a statement acknowledging reading and understanding the policies explained. Sometimes, it is easier to present the information on a video and have the employee acknowledge that they watched and understood. And good attorney will of course try to argue that the person didn’t really understand or pay attention or any other explanation they can conceive of why the policy wasn’t understood, but having done the due diligence of presenting the information, your company cannot be held responsible for what a person did or didn’t comprehend.

When you initiate and maintain a relationship with a drug testing company, you don’t have to worry about individual incident billing, there’s always a legally enforceable chain of custody protecting the tests and results, and you have a single location to send potential hires to for testing to be done. When you’ve established your ties with your chosen drug testing company, contacts and paperwork become simplified and streamlined, and answers to your questions about potential employees become available to you more quickly. Keep in mind that you can request that a candidate be tested for any one single substance; alcohol, marijuana, heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, amphetamines, PCP, ketamine, or any combination of them. Make sure you are utilizing drug testing for both pre-screening and preventing potential wrongdoers from increasing your costs and adversely affecting your bottom line.

There is no doubt that the use of alcohol and drugs play a significant part of decreased workplace safety and productivity in America. Companies should put as much effort into a drug free workplace as they put into creating profit and generating revenue. Lost hours, shoddy work habits, poor performance, and danger to co-workers are just a few examples of issues that arise when drugs or alcohol (beer or liquor) enter the workplace.

Studies show that almost three-fourths of drug and beer/liquor abusers are employed, costing employers roughly $7,000 per year from these issues. Drug use alone costs employers almost $100 billion per year in health care, accidents, worker’s compensation, and lost hours. Further, over half of on the job accidents are a result of substance abuse. Physical labor jobs constitute the bulk of these, as food and beverage industry workers, construction workers, and other laborers are most prone to this problem. As substance abuse can be higher is certain socioeconomic classes, lower income workers are potentially more susceptible to this problem, with little help often available.The most important attribute of drug testing in the workplace is the safety of people’s lives. Because the majority of substance abuse related accidents occur in physical occupations, severe injuries and even the loss of life should be the main reason companies opt to drug test. It is always better to find out about an employee’s abuse issues before they become a work hazard. Companies that make it known they have an effective drug-testing criteria for the workplace, instill productivity and calm in workers who have one less on the job issue to worry about. Further, the ability to isolate substance abuse cases and help an employee with treatment, means that worker might one day return to work with their issues under control and be productive again.

While many opponents of stricter drug testing in the workplace debate the issue of privacy, the overriding issue should be the safety of the majority of employees in the workplace. The concern of being temporary or permanently disabled from accidents caused by those using substances, coupled with the threat of emotional or behavioral problems in the workplace from these abusers, is a realistic issue for other employees. At the core, a company must provide a safe place for its employees who are there to earn an honest day’s work, provide for their families, and benefit the company and the U.S. economy as a whole. Ensuring that an office or factory environment is clean and free from such issues is the only way to operate a safe and productive business.

The last several years have been tough on the U.S. economy. This strain has been particularly rough for lower-income workers and families which typically make up the physical labor force. Because tough economic times often lead to a breakdown across the board in people’s lives, use of substances (legal or illegal) is on the rise. With this occurring, there will be an increase of workplace incidents and usage that employers must address to keep workers safe from potential threats or accidents. It is more important now than ever for companies to address drug and alcohol use at work, and implement a proper drug testing plan for the safety of all.

The state of Wisconsin has no comprehensive or general drug testing laws that regulate or prohibit workplace drug testing. Wisconsin employers are free to randomly test current employees for drugs and alcohol without the fear of being prosecuted in civil court for violating state laws. Without drug testing laws in place, Wisconsin employers are put in a position of power and can decide to fire or not hire any employee who fails a drug test or refuses to take one. This is excellent news for employers who wish to take advantage of drug testing in the workplace and benefit from increased production and lower accident rates.

Once upon a not too distant time, drinking and driving was not considered taboo like it is today. However, as the negative consequences of drinking and driving became more and more noticeable, the laws quickly changed to severely punish those caught drinking and getting behind the wheel of an automobile. Unfortunately, driving under the influence of drugs does not receive the same media attention as driving under the influence of alcohol, even though the consequences in most states, including Wisconsin, are just as severe.

You know your employees better than just about anyone else in their social circles. Spending eight or more hours a day in their company, this is only to be expected. Noticing an employee who is usually moody and uncooperative behaving happy and chipper, or by corollary an employee who is typically cheerful starts acting nervous, agitated, or irritable, might mean a number of things. In this day and age, sadly, the first thought that comes to many employers’ minds is “drugs”.

Drugs alter people’s moods and behavior in ways that may not register to someone who doesn’t know them well, but serve as warning signs for someone who does. A person who rarely talks at all suddenly can’t stop talking, at a very rapid pace, and can’t seem to sit still. This could be a sign of use of amphetamines. Someone whose normal behavior is calm and pleasant begins acting paranoid or secretive, a possible indication of cocaine. An employee whose formerly excellent attendance record starts to slip or who refuses to come to work at all may be using heroin. Dilated pupils, inappropriate or abnormal happiness, and an inability to refrain from touching various surfaces could suggest Ecstasy use.Does this automatically mean that every person who behaves a little out of character for a day or so is on drugs? Absolutely not; in fact, the exact opposite is true. What you want to look for are chronic symptoms of drug use, such as weight loss or, in the case of marijuana, weight gain. Other signs include radical changes in mood, behavior, or job performance lasting more than a day or two. Personal problems, such as marital or financial difficulties, often appear much the same way as drug use. Likewise, unexpected good news or simply waking up on the right side of the bed can make even the most irascible employee seem to be acting a little “off.”

This is where things get complicated. You don’t want to accuse an innocent employee of using drugs. This will lead to mistrust and a feeling that “Big Brother is watching,” whether justified or not. At the same time, you have a responsibility to yourself, your company, your other employees, and the general public to make sure all of your staff are fit and functional, for their own and everyone else’s safety and good. This is where having a clearly defined, streamlined drug testing policy can help.

More companies are making drug testing an essential condition of employment, from Fortune 500 corporations to small businesses on Main Street. The best argument for this practice is liability issues, especially in situations where employees are expected to drive or operate machinery as part of their regular duties. Most companies require that any injury demanding any form of treatment, whether it’s simple first aid or an ER visit, be followed up by a drug test to ensure the accident was truly an accident and not the result of negligence caused by intoxication. Additionally, random drug testing has become more popular as new employees “clean up” long enough to get hired before going right back to their usual habits.

By making your staff aware they may be subject to drug testing, this will serve as a sufficient deterrent to most people. For those this policy doesn’t deter, it will facilitate detection and help limit your company’s responsibility for expensive liability or related losses, such as theft. A clear policy regarding circumstances under which drug tests may be administered prevents excuses like “I didn’t know!”

A standardized, consistent substance abuse testing program for a broad range of drugs is great protection, but it can only catch someone after the damage is already done. Your company’s best line of defense is your own intuition, perception, and that of your staff. If someone is acting oddly for them, a simple conversation can either set your mind at ease or warn you this person is intoxicated. In this case, having a readily available substance testing option either on-site or nearby can help prevent accidents or even tragedies. Perhaps even more importantly, it can help you get your employees the help they need to get and stay drug-free, happy, and productive.

As a small business owner in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, you know that it is important to establish a reputation within your community for providing quality products and services to your customers. You also know that a safe work environment is essential for you to meet your company’s goals. While it may be admirable to trust your employees to not use drugs such as marijuana, the truth is that drug abuse can infiltrate any business when there is not a screening system in place. Additionally, drug abuse at work can lead to serious consequences such as increased tardiness, accidents and erratic behavior. For this reason, every small business owner has a responsibility to establish a drug-free zone that makes it clear that drugs such as amphetamines and heroin will not be tolerated. By doing so, your small business will experience the following benefits that can provide a positive impact upon your company and every employee.

Reduced Accidents and Injuries

One of the greatest concerns regarding drug abuse and the workplace is that working while under the influence of illegal drugs, such as ecstasy, puts employees at risk for serious accidents and injuries. For this reason, it is important to make it clear that you will not tolerate any drug use on or off of your company’s premises. This can be done by making pre-employment drug testing a standard hiring requirement. Additionally, anytime an injury occurs, the responsible parties should always be screened to ensure that they are not liable for the accident.

Positive Morale

When your employees know what is expected of them from the start, they will be more likely to follow the other standards established by your business. Each employee will also benefit from knowing that they are safe from the dangers of cocaine and other illegal drugs. Drug-free employees are also more likely to have a positive attitude about working that can have a tremendous impact upon your employee morale. Additionally, happier and healthier employees will work more efficiently while maintaining good work habits such as arriving on time.

Increased Productivity

When workers abuse cocaine and amphetamines, they will usually begin to experience negative patterns in their behavior that can hinder their productivity. Absenteeism, tardiness and slower movement can all make it harder for your business to meet their goals. Drugs that lead to short-term memory loss, such as marijuana, can also make it harder for your employees to manage their daily tasks. However, implementing a drug-free workplace will eradicate the problems with productivity that are associated with the recreational use of ecstasy and other drugs. Additionally, when every team member can pull their weight, the entire workplace will benefit from knowing that no one will have to pick up the slack when someone’s drug problem interferes with work. This can further increase productivity by encouraging team building and effective problem solving that can only be accomplished through a drug-free environment.

A Reputation for Quality

In Milwaukee, residents and visitors want to know that they are receiving goods and services through a company that is dedicated to quality. As word gets around that your business supports a drug-free work zone, your customers will be sure to hear about the importance you place on your employees’ health and safety. This also makes it clear that every product or service you provide has been developed under the care of a person who is not under the influence of marijuana or another illegal drug. Over time, this reputation for quality can pay off in an increase in the level of experience that your employees has, an expanded customer-base as well as the support of your community. Each of these factors will always lead to more profits and a positive reputation that can attract new customers.

Once small business owners realize the substantial benefits of starting a drug-free work zone, they quickly realize that the best way to do so is to make it clear to every employee from the beginning of the hiring process. The best way to accomplish this is to implement pre-employment drug testing that can screen for drugs such as heroin. Then, employers can use drug testing on either random or scheduled intervals to ensure that every employee abstains from drugs such as ecstasy. Once you do so, you can expect to see morale and productivity rise while making a good impression upon the general public.