Mandatory drug testing

The majority of employers have adopted mandatory random drug testing on their employees, arguing that the enormous damage caused by the pervasive use of drugs in our society carries over into the workplace. Typically the tests involve taking urine or blood samples under close observation, thereby raising questions about personal privacy as well as privacy issues regarding drug use away from the workplace that is revealed by the tests. 

Present & defend your view concerning mandatory drug tests at the workplace. 

In your answer, take account of the argument that, except where safety is a clear & present danger, as in the work of pilots, police & the military, such tests are unjustified. Employera have a right to the level of performance for which they pay employees, a level typically  specified in contracts & job descriptions. When a particular employee fails to meet that level of performance, then employers will take appropriate disciplinary action based on observable behaviour. Either way, it is employee performance that is relevant in evaluating employees, not drug use per se.

What do you think?

At first, drug use, abuse, or addiction among employees can cause expensive problems for business and industry even if the person was using it away from the workplace. These problems are ranged from loss of productivity, absenteeism, injuries, fatalities, theft and low employee morale, to an increase in health care, legal liabilities and workers’ compensation costs. In addition drug abuse can cause problems at work including after-effects of substance use (withdrawal) which affect job performance, preoccupation with obtaining and using substances while at work, interfering with attention and concentration, and psychological or stress-related effects due to drug use by a friend or a co-worker that affects another person’s job performance.

In other words, drug addicts are bad for business due to the lack of performance, since they have inconsistent work quality, poor concentration and lack of focus, lowered productivity or unreliable work patterns, increased absenteeism or on the job “presenteeism”, unexplained disappearances from the workplace, carelessness, mistakes or errors in judgment, needless risk taking, disregard for safety for self and others on the job. Also drug addicts are bad for business due to bad workplace behavior, since they have frequent financial problems and avoidance of friends and colleagues, blaming others for their own problems and shortcomings, complaints about problems at home, deterioration in personal appearance or hygiene complaints, and excuses and time off for vaguely defined illnesses or family problems.

What I mean is that the mandatory drug tests at workplace are essential and a must, to make sure that all employees are drug free, for the continuity of business and the safety of the workplace and its employees. After all, drugs always leads to chaos.

Case Study 1

                                      Building Collapses in Deira 

Twenty-one workers had a narrow escape when a six-storey building that was under construction in the Deira area collapsed on Sunday, a police officer said.

Members of Dubai Police and Fire and Rescue and Civil Defense cordoned the area of a building which collapsed at the corner of 1st and 28th street in Abu Hail, behind Ramada Continental Hotel in Deira. No one was reported injured. No one was injured, but nearly a dozen cars were destroyed.

Sniffer dogs searched the rubble till late at night.

The building on Al Etihad Road at the Galadari Intersection, next to Ramada Continental Hotel, collapsed around 3.30pm, said Brigadier Khalil Al Mansouri, director of General Department of Criminal Investigation.

He said 21 workers were inside the building when they heard the crackling sound. Ten of them rushed to safety, and the remaining 11 were later evacuated, along with people from neighbouring buildings, minutes before the building collapsed.

Colonel Ahmed  AL Sayeq, deputy director of Dubai Civil Defense, said the neighbouring buildings were evacuated for fear that water leakage in the ground may have caused the collapse.

 The Acting Commander-in-Chief of Dubai Police, Major-General Khamis Mattar Al Mazina, said Hazaa Contracting and Bait Al Emarat Engineering Consultants, the building’s developers, will be investigated in coordination with Dubai Municipality.

Marwan Abdullah, head of Building Licensing Unit, Dubai Municipality, said that a team of experts were examining the site.

“We felt tremors and looked outside and saw something like smoke,” said Ishraq Hibib, 17, who lives in Yasmeen building, about 100m from the site .

 Ali Hassan, another resident in the area, said, “While I was having lunch I heard a noise and I thought that it was an earthquake. We saw cars under the concrete and glass that covered them.”

Office workers in the area also thought an earthquake had occurred.

“I’m about 400m away. I experienced a jerk in our building and thought it was an earthquake,” said Zainudheen Parissery.

Conclusion from what I have read from the web:

The collapse of the Deira building was found to be caused by faults in its design, engineering and building materials. The investigation had a three pronged approach, focusing on design, engineering and the building material used, as well as some other aspects such as whether there was ground water beneath the building. There were faults found in all three of the categories; there was an engineering fault, misuse of building materials, and the structure of the building was found to be weak. That is evident from the fact that the building collapsed on itself from its middle. the one to blame is the company which build it in general and the project manager, contractor and engineers in specific since they didn't check the design for any fault prior of construction, and checking the materials if they where good and strong enough to hold the building while building it.  the reason for such act is still unknown if it was due to shortage in money or in time, but what is known is that not checking the construction design and material used is considered unethical whatsoever the reason is, since an unsafe building is hazardous to the lives of it residents and its surroundings.    

Human rights

Human rights

The American Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The Declaration was largely the work of Thomas Jefferson, who later became the 3rd President of the United States. It is really the basis of what we call rights ethics.
This basically rests on the view that all human beings have human rights. Human rights are not legalrights. They are universal and so democratic. They fit in with what Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg address (November 1864) described as 'government of the people, by the people, for the people'.
Human rights rely on the belief that other people have a duty to respect our rights. 

Jean-Jacques Rousseau:

"Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains" That was the first sentence of Rousseau's "The Social Contract."

This was the concept of ‘the noble savage’.

Thomas Hobbes:

"In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently, not culture of the earth, no navigation, nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Aluminium cans

Approximately 1 billion are produced in the USA each year. The first can was designed in 1958 by Kaiser Aluminium. This metal proved ideal as it was a lightweight, flexible material that allowed manufacturing of the bottom & sides of the can from a single sheet, leaving the top to be added after the can was filled.

The first cans were opened with a separate opener but this was inconvenient so Ermal Fraze designed a small lever attached to the can which was removed as the can was opened.

The design was workable but after a while it created an ethical dilemma:

which was because Fraze didn’t think through the implications of billions of discarded pull tabs which caused pollution, foot injuries, and harm to fish and infants who ingested them.

So in 1976 Daniel F. Cudzik invented a simple, stay-attached opener of the sort familiar today.

As improvements were made in the design & production of aluminium cans, various  ethical problems arose concerning:

a.      Human safety: A Canadian study has found significant levels of the controversial chemical BPA in energy drink and soda cans. those cans are treated with a BPA-containing liner to prevent drinks from coming in contact with metal. BPA is an estrogen-based hormone disrupter that leaches into our food and then into our body. It has been linked in lab animals to cancer, obesity, diabetes, fertility problems and behavioral disorders.

b.     Environmental pollution: Even though aluminum cans are environmentally good when recycled, more than 100 billion aluminum cans are sold in the United States alone each year, but less than half are recycled. A similar number of aluminum cans in other countries are also incinerated or sent to landfills. which means 1.5 million tons of unrecycled cans every year, which will be replaced with new cans from new materials.

c.      Convenience: Well, aluminum is light so it’s easy to open and carry, also it won’t rust so it’s quite appropriate since most cans contain water. Also it keeps liquids for a long time without contamination and helps the liquids in cans cool. Similar effects come from plastic and glass but when thinking of recycling aluminum is cheaper and better at recycling for the environment, so mostly aluminum cans are very convenient when using, recycling, making and keeping for a long period of time.

d.     Money:  in business, it's all about money, the bottom line. I'd guess that aluminum is cheaper to buy and make into a can. Aluminum is lighter than tin or steel, so the trucks which carry all those soft drink cans to the stores will use less fuel if the cans are aluminum.