Drugs and alcohol: calls for more workplace testing

A big worksite test laboratory says thousands of drug or alcohol-affected workers are turning up for work each day.

The nation’s largest worksite drug testing laboratory is calling for legislation to make drug and alcohol testing compulsory at construction and other worksites.

Safework Laboratories forensic toxicologist Andrew Leibie says fewer than 8 per cent of the Australian workforce is tested, compared with 70 per cent in the US and similar levels in Europe.

He says testing in construction, manufacturing, warehousing, logistics and transport shows up to 10 per cent of the workforce record a positive the first time they are tested, meaning up to 100,000 people are turning up to work affected by drugs or alcohol each day in construction alone.

The National Centre for Education and Training on Addiction has found Australian workers take more than 2.5 million days of sick leave because of alcohol or drug use, resulting in lost productivity worth $3 billion.

Leibie says when companies introduced drug testing, positive results reduced to about 5 per cent almost overnight, and to about 3 per cent after a year.

Mental health

The Northern Sydney Institute has created a mental health first-aid course aimed at the white-collar workforce, with most of the training program undertaken online.

Mental health first-aid trainer Sandy Schieb says the institute has been running courses for four years. The training program offers general two-day courses, a 14-hour youth course, and a schools course for students in years 10 to 12.

“We talk about the signs and symptoms for different mental health conditions and it provides people with much better skills about what’s happening to people, and how to provide help and support,” Schieb says.

While every worksite has a medical first-aid representative, few have trained mental health first-aid workers.

[e-mail]

Job hoppers

The University of Adelaide’s school of business has found job-hopping affects executive remuneration, and that after a company loses one or more of its executives to another firm, it often gives dramatic pay rises to remaining senior corporate staff.

Juan Luo, whose research was published in the Journal of Accounting and Economics, looked at more than 500 examples of executive job-hopping from 1993 to 2011.

Luo says in the year before the job change to the year afterwards, the median total remuneration package for executives who remained in their role after a colleague accepted a position at another firm increased from $1.4 million to $2.04m, a rise of 46 per cent.

The pay rise was more pronounced when remaining executives had greater employment mobility, companies lost senior executives and job-hoppers received good offers from other firms.

Indigenous jobs

Ardent Leisure has committed to doubling the number of indigenous employees at its theme parks across the next three years as part of its Stretch Reconciliation Action Plan.

Chief executive Deborah Thomas says the company, which runs Dreamworld, WhiteWater World and SkyPoint on the Queensland Gold Coast, plans to lift indigenous staffing to more than 5 per cent of its total of about 1000 people by 2018.

“As a group we are determined to develop a deeper understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s history, cultures and achievements,” Thomas says.