Failed Drug Test Could Prevent Jobless Benefits
The S.C. House bill approved last week calls for suspension of unemployment benefits if someone failed or refused to take drug tests for employment.
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Failing or refusing to take an employer's drug test could put a stop to your unemployment benefits if you're among South Carolina's jobless.
Last week, the South Carolina House passed bill 4043, which allows an employer to "confidentially notify the Department of Employment and Workforce when a prospective employee fails a drug test required by the employer as a condition of employment."
The bill, which passed 70-24, also states that the suspended benefits couldn't be restored until the person has successfully completed a drug treatment program and passes a drug test.
The concept for drug testing the state's unemployed who receive benefits is one Gov. Nikki Haley has strongly supported since running for governor.
"I so want drug testing," Haley said at a Rotary breakfast in September. "It's something I've been wanting since the first day I walked into office."
Haley's camp sees drug testing as a way to reform the state's unemployment system.
Several people seeking jobless benefits told Patch editors and the Huffington Post in January that the testing was an invasion of privacy.
Lawmakers disagree.
In a report from The State, Rep. Eddie Tallon, of Spartanburg, the bill's main sponsor, said if someone who is receiving benefits misses out on a job offer because of drugs, they shouldn't be allowed to collect the benefits.
"It's fundamentally not right," he said.
The bill now heads to the Senate for first reading and debate.
Carolyn Farr Smith
5:03 pm on Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Do you feel the testing is an invasion of privacy?
Gretchen
9:16 am on Wednesday, April 4, 2012
absolutely NOT !
ReadIt
11:32 pm on Tuesday, April 3, 2012
I'd love to see if EVERY state legislator would be willing to be submitted to a drug test before entering their respective chambers - since we, the public, are ultimately their employers, then I see it fitting that we require them to submit to drug tests before every session and/or every day they are paid for their duties. Then see if they think it's still not an invasion of privacy. And by the way, how hypocritical is it for this largely Republican legislature to pass MORE government regulations?
Mimi
1:16 am on Wednesday, April 4, 2012
They fail to tell the people of South Carolina how inaccurate these test are. So not only is a person subjected to taking the test but then the burden is on them to prove they are inaccurate. This is pathetic and just another radical agenda from the Republican party. The party crying about freedom and smaller government just keeps invading our freedom and growing government invading our lives. I would think it would be more benefical for the people of SC if their legistrators took care of exsisting problems instead of creating invisible ones.
Rusty Inman
10:15 am on Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Mimi
I think I've read similar remarks from you in the past per the conflict between the GOP's yap about smaller, less pervasive and less invasive government and its practice, in real time, of ever-increasing not only the size of government (Our "small government" governor putting her imprimatur on four newly-created DHEC positions that will together will cost the state over $600,000 annually is a perfect example!) but also its capacity to intrude upon our private lives.
Keep stickin' it to 'em.
How ironic is it that the political party claiming to be most worshipful of the Constitution, most insistent that "original intent" be the primary interpretive principle utilized in its applications, and most arrogant in asserting a philosophical ancestry inclusive of its "founders" and "framers," is the political party that, on a regular basis, finds itself having to defend the constitutionality of its leaders' decisions and actions---think Jan Brewer, Nikki Haley, just to name two---in the courts? And does not the irony descend into low comedy every time the courts rule the actions of these "strict constructionist" wannabes to be violative of the document to which they swear their allegiance?
It would be laughable except for the fact that Ms. Haley's unconstitutional adventures have, in just over a year, presented South Carolina's taxpayers with some pretty hefty legal bills. Not that she cares, but I do.
Budman
8:11 am on Wednesday, April 4, 2012
I think this is a good idea since I have to take these to earn a paycheck that pays for these benefits. Plus it is equally bad when they are unemployed because of a failed drug test! Also this does fall in line with the effort to refuse benefits to people who do not deserve them Those fired from jobs for various reasons
Rusty Inman
8:37 am on Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Though I do think that drug-testing the unemployed in the absence of, well, "reasonable cause," should be held as violative of one's privacy rights, two very borderline--and, as far as I am concerned, poorly-decided--precedents combine with the ubiquitousness of the practice in our culture to establish a context that is less than conducive to such a ruling.
However, relative to this bill, it is still worth asking...
(1) What are we to think of a governor who efforts to establish her conservative bona fides by casting the shadow of suspicion on a sector of the populace that is, at present, far more needful of a kind word and a hint of hope than undeserved aspersions cast by an amateurish politician doing nothing more than servicing her delusional aspirations?
And...
(2) What are we to think of a governor who has proven herself far more effective at solving problems for whose existence there are no evidentiary claims (one remembers, beyond her "misstatements" per the presence of "widespread" voter fraud, her blatant lies about the prevalence of positive drug tests per qualified applicants at the Savannah River Plant) than solving problems that are, well, real?
What is there to think other than that she simply doesn't care?
She proudly proclaims that she has been figuratively, if not literally, drooling "since the first day I walked into office" about ripping money out of the hands of those who perhaps most need it. Who finds joy in that?
Nikki Haley.
Melissa Rhodes
9:05 am on Wednesday, April 4, 2012
This is not an invasion of privacy. If ordinary employees are subjected to random drug testing in order to continue earning an honest paycheck then why not drug test those who receive state/government assistance? Unemployment benefits and welfare recipients should be subjected to random drug testing. Why should tax payers dollars support drug addicts? While some state inaccuracies of urine testing, blood testing should be mandatory. Anyone can pass a (random) urine test. One can't fudge a blood test.
bernie
9:30 am on Wednesday, April 4, 2012
This is crazy, and invasion of privacy. What you do on your time is your business. Alot of you are agreeing with it, but what if it was you who got laided off and this is one of the requirements for you to get your check. does this law include prescription drugs as well? because alot of people are taking prescription med to get high
M.G. Hammock
9:45 am on Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Unemployment benefits are paid by the employer first then anything else is followed by State funds. I would much rather see those getting free housing, utility and food from those of us that work, get drug testing! Burns me up!
Rusty Inman
12:56 pm on Wednesday, April 4, 2012
It is, indeed, frustrating to see someone "working the system" in order to undeservedly qualify for private/public money that is then spent in ways with which we might disagree. But remembering two things helps me to at least properly direct some of my frustration:
(1) The vast majority of those who receive unemployment benefits or other private/public assistance are righteous in their need, their application, and their use of the assistance they receive. Viscerally, you might not think that's true. But every study I have ever seen says it is. It isn't helpful when folks generalize from the particular, when blanket indictments are issued for transgressions committed by a few individuals.
(2) It is interesting that, when we ascend the soapbox to cast judgment upon those whom we believe to be "working the system" in order to undeservedly access public assistance, we almost inevitably direct our screeds at individuals or families who, for this reason or that, find themselves in dire straits. Almost never do I hear a rant about "working the system" that references those who are not only the most undeserving but also the least needful of all who receive monies that amount to public assistance: Corporate America, the annual recipient of billions of taxpayer dollars that are nothing more and nothing less than "corporate welfare."
Given those numbers, perhaps we need to drug-test not the recipients of public funds, but the ones who are giving the money away.
Jonathan Edwards
11:50 am on Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Why should a hungry child lose free food because his mother smokes marijuana? This is just another example of Republicans using government intervention when it suits them -- in a really creepy, judgemental, and paternal way.
SDR
11:53 am on Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Read the article again, Flash. SNAP is not mentioned.
Mark Winter
2:59 pm on Wednesday, April 4, 2012
If a child's mother (or father) has time to smoke weed while living sitting on their duffs collecing our tax dollars then they have time to go out and find a job. If they have enough money to buy marijuana then they have enough money to feed their children without government assistance. This has nothing to do with Republicans or Democrats. If you are really in need of welfare or unemployment to support your family then you shouldn't have a problem with this, that is if you are a responsible adult.
I also agree that all of our elected officials should take a drug test.
Rusty Inman
3:51 pm on Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Referencing the situation to which you point, wherein a child is punished by the state for his mother's irresponsible behavior, I could not agree with you more strongly.
Having fought, on behalf of a mother and her four children, just such a ruling made by the Department of Social Services in the North Carolina High Country county in which I then lived (they cut assistance off because she allowed the kids' dad, a convicted felon who had been released after three years in jail, to spend the weekends with them in the beat-up travel trailer they called home; she was, they said, breaking a rule by allowing a convicted felon to co-habitate), a friend of mine, commiserating with me, innocently referred to the situation as "a real conundrum." I quickly told him that it was not a conundrum at all because all reason and all conscience pointed to only one conclusion: You do not punish children--taking their home, allowing them to go hungry, etc. constituted, I thought, punishment--for the fallibilities of the adults around them.
There is growing up in our midst a mean-spiritedness that, for me, is made a bit scary by the fact that those who exhibit it seem to feel justified in doing so. It is made even more scary by the fact that some of those who justify their own exhibition of it sit around me in the pews on Sunday mornings.
George Norman
2:11 am on Monday, April 16, 2012
Just because you get tested at your job doesn't make it right. If you get robbed then a week later your neighbor gets robbed, do you think it's all good then? I hope not, I would think that you would get together with your neighbor and take care of the sorry s.o.b. that is robbing your neighborhood. Our government should not be able to drug test people without due process of the law, or at the minimum probable cause. It is bad enough that they can delegate a power that they don't have themselves out to employers, with the drug free workplace act. Unless an employer is paying you at least minimum wage for 168 hours a week, he should be in violation of the fair wage and standard act for forcing you to follow his policies when you are not on duty. It is none of your employer's business what you do in the privacy of your home, if he is not paying you. They have pulled this off and gotten away with it for long enough that it is seen as the norm. Give them an inch and they want a mile. Now they want to just ignore our Bill of Rights and search anyone they choose, right down to their body fluids. No innocent till proven guilty, no probable cause, no right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. We need to worry about how we can produce quality products that are marketable worldwide, and getting these people back to work. Quit trying to strip more and more rights from America.