“Post-incident drug and alcohol testing is part of the investigation process. An employer doesn’t have to complete its investigation before deciding to engage in post-incident testing, but at the same time it has to balance any decision made with the privacy and dignity interests of the employee – it has to have enough information to justify that intrusion.”
So says Ilan Burkes, a labour and employment lawyer at Harris & Company in Vancouver, after a British Columbia arbitrator ruled in favour of an employer in a case involving post-incident drug and alcohol testing of an employee.
The worker was employed as a heavy-duty mechanic since 2011 with Western Forest Products, a Vancouver-based lumber company.
