ATA urges US Congress to move forward with hair testing for commercial drivers
American Trucking Associations (ATA) President and CEO Bill Graves has urged US Congress to move forward with legislation that would allow fleets to use hair samples as part of a federally required programme of drug screening for commercial drivers. In an open letter sent to US Congress on Monday (24 August), Graves wrote: “Every day, thousands of hair tests are performed worldwide within both the private and public sectors.
“Their reason for using hair testing is laudable … hair testing is an effective tool for identifying drug users due to its long detection window and because it is difficult for donors to beat the test.”
The ATA President continued: “ATA is aware of thousands of truck drivers who have tested positive for illegal drug use on hair tests and have obtained driving positions with other carriers because they were subsequently able to pass DOT-required urine tests. Several of these drivers have had crashes and, of course, future ones are likely as a result.”
The ATA claimed that a survey of four large carriers revealed that, this year alone, 706 drivers failed pre-employment hair tests but passed urine tests.
“If the labor organizations opposed to the legislation had their way, these individuals would be driving tractor-trailers,” added Graves, who also said that concerns about environmental contamination and racial bias in hair testing were “unfounded and overblown”.
The full text of Graves’ letter, can be accessed at: http://trck.ng/BGLetter824.
On the other side of the debate, a group of 17 workers’ advocate organizations – including the Teamsters and the Transport Workers Union – sent an open letter to the US House of Representatives’ Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last week, asked representatives to remove clauses allowing hair tests from two bills: the US Senate’s DRIVE Act and the US House’s Drug Free Commercial Driver Act. The unions claim that hair testing is prone to giving “false positives”.
