Employer Intrusions Into Employees' Private Lives

Nowadays, pre-employment drug testing and random tests thereafter are an everyday fact of life in many American workplaces. I believe that an employer has every right to insist that employees be sober while on the job, for reasons of safety and for the mere fact that the employer is paying you for those hours.

However, what employees do on their own time, away from the workplace, is their own concern, and as long as such employees do not show up to work drunk or high, their off hours activities are none of an employer’s business.

On my last job, there was one supervisor who had gained the respect of all those under his supervision and even those in other departments. This was because he, unlike the other supervisors, treated the employees with respect and consideration. Naturally, this did not sit well with upper management, as he did not merely spout the company line, as he was expected to do. Because they couldn’t openly fire him for this reason, they had to find another way to get rid of him. They could find no fault with his work, so they had him to take a random drug test. When the urine test came back clean, he was required to take another, more precise test, which nailed him for marijuana. So, despite the fact he’d never shown up impaired on the job, nor had he missed work or been late, he was terminated.

I was disturbed by this invasion of privacy, as were most of the other employees.

And though workplace drug testing is something that would never affect me adversely, as I’ve never done drugs and haven’t drank in years, employer intrusion into employee privacy is not limited to drug testing. Employers have also been known to intrude into employees’ personal relationships, even if such relationships do not affect their jobs, an issue which has great relevance to me as a libertine.

When I was on the police force, one of the married officers on my shift was having an affair with a divorced dispatcher. However, they were quite discreet and limited their relationship to off hours, with it never affecting their jobs. Nevertheless, once the chief, who was a fundamentalist, got wind of it, they were both fired. Another dispatcher was called into his office and given an official reprimand for having a baby out of wedlock. To be honest, I don’t know how I managed to escape his radar myself, but I guess I was just lucky.

Fortunately, he retired fairly early on in my tenure there, and was replaced by a younger man who stayed out of the private lives of his employees. But remembering this, combined with the rise of the religious right and of conservative government, I see this type of intrusion increasing in workplaces in the years to come, which disturbs the hell out of me.

As far as I see it, an employer can tell me what to do while I’m at work, but they don’t own me 24/7 and should stay the hell out of my private life.

Thoughts?