So is confidentiality. At Warner, a drug test is a simple procedure. The employee or potential hire enters a bathroom alone and emerges with a urine specimen. The testing lab picks up the sample within 24 hours. For new hires, the lab technicians run a basic $30 screening test that looks for such drugs as marijuana, cocaine, PCP, opiates, amphetamines, and barbiturates. For veteran employees suspected of using drugs, they run a more complex test that costs $75. In either case, if the first test is positive, a second one is done to verify the finding. Results are reported within 48 hours.
If the second test is positive, the lab calls Warner's payroll clerk, who contacts the individual's manager. "The manager tells the person he can no longer work for us," Warner says. "And that's the end of it. You don't bargain or debate their abilities. The manager is not allowed to say anything to anybody about why the person was discharged."
In a program that relies on testing, nothing is more important than having a reputable lab. Warner's lab, Metpath, does more than just test. It helped the company set up testing procedures and conducted a training class for all branch managers. It also supplies all the testing paraphernalia and stores samples for six months, in case a test's accuracy should face a legal challenge.
In five years, Warner says, only one employee has objected to the test on principle. He finally submitted to one to save his job -- and he tested clean. Though Warner admits the program has provoked other dissent, most employees have had no objections. "We all realize why it's being done," says John Rice, a plumber who's been at Warner for 32 years. "At first you had a lot of complaints because you had a lot of drug addicts here. As they got weeded out, you got rid of the complaints."
Tom Warner would like to agree that drugs have vanished from his company, but he knows better. Last year 14 employees tested positive, mostly for marijuana and cocaine, after urinalyses that followed accidents and injuries. "I'm not sure you can ever stamp it out completely," Warner says. "It's so pervasive in society."
Even so, the results of his five-year effort are stunning. From 1982 to 1985, for example, the company averaged 111 workers' compensation claims a year in a work force of 178. From 1986 through 1989, with the program in place, claims dropped an average of 40% per year. For the company's fiscal year that ended last June, the total came in at 35. "Because of the lower claims, we're saving at least $150,000 a year right now, and next year we'll be saving even more, considering the long-term trends we're reversing," Warner says.
Vehicular-accident rates have plunged as well. From an average of 76 a year before the program, when the Warner truck fleet numbered 146, accidents have fallen to 35, with 174 trucks on the road. Warner's auto-insurance premiums have dropped by more than $50,000, even with more trucks.
That's not all. The apprentice program now enjoys a 75% graduation rate, which is saving the company about $165,000 a year by Warner's estimate. With a waiting list of plumbers and mechanics who want to join the company -- because of the apprentice program -- Warner is saving $20,000 a year on classified ads.
Together those annual reductions total at least $385,000, from a drug program that costs about $12,000 a year to administer. As added benefits, Warner lists high morale, punctuality, and customers who are better satisfied because of quality work and reliability.
Despite its success, some employee-assistance professionals criticize approaches like Warner's as draconian. They say that drug abuse, like alcoholism, is a disease. And the way to handle it is through rehabilitation, not by firing people. All employers like Warner are doing, they contend, is pushing dopers onto someone else's payroll.
But Warner counters that if all companies tested, drug users would have no refuge. He makes short shrift of the notion that drug addiction is an illness that he, as the employer, should pay for. "I don't want to spend money fixing someone else's problem when I didn't get the guy hooked on drugs," he says. "In my view, if an employee has a drug problem, he caused it. My job is to meet my payroll and satisfy my customers. If I have to pay for treatment, I ultimately have to charge my clients for it.
"The bottom line is that we have a policy that's firm but fair," he adds. "And my company is a better company because of it."
* * *
The Company The Warner Corp., Washington, D.C.; a 50-year-old plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning repair company with revenues of $16 million and 220 employees
The Program Instituted in 1985; based on regular drug testing through urinalysis. A positive test calls for mandatory discharge.
The Cost An estimated $12,000 per year
The Return An estimated $385,000 per year, resulting from decreases in workers' compensation claims, vehicular accidents, auto-insurance premiums, absenteeism, and training costs for new employees
* * * * *
Conspicuously absent from Tom Warner's approach is education, the centerpiece of the drug-fighting effort at Sawyer Gas Co. A $12-million, Jacksonville-based outfit, Sawyer Gas provides propane gas, appliances, and heating and air-conditioning services from its seven locations throughout northeastern Florida.
