The City of Crumm Mountain, NY     |   home Should we thank Osama bin Laden for our freedom?   |   Things Get Messy When Wal-Mart Workers Try to Get Organized   |   By Sean Bennett   |   Union-Busting on the Dock of the Bay   |   Rifts On the Right   |   Operation Infantile Justice   |   Making Hay While the Smoke Clears   |   2001: A Chlymidia Mountain Odyssey   |   By Lisa James   |   Chairman Selleck: To dump or not to dump?   |   By Herbert Molzahn   |   Workplace Drug Testing   |   Bertha Vs. the unsung heroes of the Richmondville Road Crew   |   Alright Already   |   Make it out to CASH   |   Quigly Gulch pollution uncovered   |   Stan Grouke for Congress?   |   Defense appropriations bill passes   |   John McCallister: The man who would be Mayor   |   Whats Darlene La pixie up to?   |   Whats happening at the Pomegranate Valley prison?   |   Coup, Interrupted   |   What Is To Be Done with the Democrats   |   Terrorist Threat Eclipses Much Larger Healthcare Crisis   |   The Second International and the Collapse of German Social Democracy   |   The Economic and Political Effects of the Living Wage Movement   |   Rumsfeld's Rathole Workplace Drug Testing This is the letter that The Times Journal refused to print.   Dear Editor:           Several letters appeared in last week’s Times-Journal* defending present workplace drug testing practices.  The writers seemed to have such distorted perceptions of the issue, that I became curious as to what their urine tests might reveal.         First of all, employers have absolutely no business poking their noses into the private lives of their employees.   What an individual chooses to do after he or she punches out of work, is not their boss’s business.          Unless a worker is visibly impaired as a result of his or her abuse of elicit substances, and incapable of performing basic job functions effectively and safely, an employer has no need to know whether an employee uses drugs recreationally.  Yes,  people are entitled to safe and drug free workplaces, but urine screening is not necessary.  See if a person comes in to work stumbling all over the place, and reeking of booze, you don’t need to analyze their urine to know that it would probably be prudent to keep him or her away from heavy machinery,  Even the most passionate civil libertarian would probably agree with that.        In most cases however, urine testing isn’t used to provide workers with a safe working environment, but instead to pry into the lives of American citizens.  It creates a working environment that is eerily reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984.  An omnipresent government monitoring it’s citizens every move.   How far are we from this?    We live under a backwards militaristic government that routinely disregards the constitution, enforcing an insane war on drugs that has become in effect, a war on the American people and our freedoms.   How far off is Big Brother and the Thought Police?  Even more frustrating than watching our civil rights deteriorate and not being able to do anything about it, is the fact that some have actually been duped into believing that it is for their own good.  It is a sad day when people are being oppressed and don’t even know it.        I find it rather interesting that in the same issue of the Times Journal that Denise Wainwright praises her employer Guilford Mills, for their dedication and vigilance in creating a safe, drug free environment by drug testing their employees, the front page featured a story about how the plant recently received a bomb threat and management didn’t even bother to inform the workers. (sic)      They just let them keep on working like nothing was going on.  That is absolutely outrageous. Who really believes that they give a damn about providing workers with a safe working environment?                                                      Sincerely                                    Bertha "holding it in" Hann *The Times Journal is the weekly newspaper of Cobleskill, NY.    A neighboring community.