Mandatory alcohol testing opposed

Staff at Guinness have led the opposition within the trade union movement to the implementation of any form of mandatory testing for alcohol in the workplace.

Delegates to the Ictu conference passed a motion proposed by the Guinness Staff Union which accepted that an agreed national policy on alcohol in the workplace would benefit both employees and employers. However, it argued that mandatory testing would be unacceptable.

Guinness Staff Union general secretary Seán Mackell said mandatory testing for alcohol represented a breach of human rights.

"We are talking here about the random testing of all workers. A secretary typing a letter who had had a glass of wine the night before could be subjected to an invasive test and potentially lose their job because they had a miniscule amount of alcohol in the system", he said.

Mr Mackell said the motivation for the motion was not about a union which represented staff in the alcohol industry "trying to guard a product which they made". He said the test should be whether a person was impaired as a result of alcohol in their ability to do the job.

Mr Mackell said legislation governing health, safety and welfare in the workplace allowed for the testing of workers for intoxicants. Anyone who refused to undergo such a test was liable to a possible fine or imprisonment.

He argued that such testing was hugely invasive and involved taking a blood or alcohol sample, and could also be extremely humiliating. He said that in some other jurisdictions workers had been forced to urinate in a bottle while watched by an attendant "just like at the Olympics".

Mr Mackell warned that the next step could be the introduction of "gene machines" which would allow staff to be tested for future illnesses or disabilities.

"We have to say 'no' to compulsory health testing for alcohol or anything else."

The conference also passed a motion which endorsed action by teaching unions to conduct "refusal to teach" ballots in schools which failed to take action to tackle violent or disruptive students.

Fred Bryant of the British teaching union NASUMT said that last year in the North there had been 262 violent attacks on teachers but that only seven students had been expelled. This was the tip of the iceberg and many assaults were not reported, he said. There were no figures at all for verbal assaults made against teachers by students.