In 2023, Walmart relaxed its
policy requiring anyone applying for a job at the company to get a drug test,
including for marijuana, which at the time was legal in several U.S. member
states. Once hired, however, employees were still subject to random testing. An
employee in a member state in which the drug is legal could be fired even if
the person is never affected by the drug while working. I contend that the practice is unfair, unethical, and an over-reach in terms of the nature of a labor contract.
The ethical principle of fairness
is violated because both marijuana and alcohol can impair the brain and yet the
company only tests for one even where both drugs are legal. An argument can be
made that the alcoholic personality is less than suitable, and yet taking
marijuana outside of work (with no impact during work hours) is reason enough
for an employee to be fired. Whereas alcohol can inducive hostility and even
aggression, marijuana has a calming drug—something that could actually help
busy cashiers.
Besides being unfair, the policy
of even random tests for marijuana is invasive, beyond the legitimate scope of
an employer’s reach—assuming that the employee using marijuana is never “high”
at work. In selling one’s labor, an employee does not agree to a company’s
management being able to control the employee’s legal activities outside of
work if those activities do not affect the employee’s work. Sam Walton, the
founder of Walmart, was against marijuana; for him to impose his ideological
opposition on others where the drug is legal was over-reaching and impious; he
was not a god. An argument can also be made that it is none of the company’s
business, literally and figuratively, whether an employee uses the drug where
it is illegal, again as long as the employee is not “high” at work. Law
enforcement is the job of police, not a company’s managers. Of course, if an employee
is convicted of a crime, an employer may not permit convicted employees to
continue. In the case of Walmart, it hires people who have criminal records,
which shows just how nonsensical the policy of random testing for marijuana is
(especially as more and more U.S. member states legalize recreational use of
the drug). In terms of a contract between an employer and an employee, an
employer who presumes to dictate an employee’s recreational activities imposes
a cost on employees that is not offset by the monetary compensation.
Imagine what would happen if a
labor union informed a company’s management that an abrasive supervisor must
be subject to drug and alcohol tests and fired for any positive results, or
else the employees would strike. Suppose too that the supervisor does indeed
have a problem with alcohol, but is not under its influence while at work.
Still the union insists that the company fire that person. Suddenly, the
company’s management would object with a mighty roar, How dare employees
tell us what we cannot do on our days off! The nerve! Well, it goes both
ways, folks. The attitude is the same: the unethical vice of invasiveness (in
peoples’ personal, not work-related lives) is noxious and may even point to a
toxic organizational culture.
See: Walmart:
Bad Management as Unethical
