Drug Testing of Public Transit Workers

Drug testing of transit workers has been suggested in a recent Canadian safety and transit report. According to the Globe and Mail June 13, 2008 article,("TTC Report Recommends Employee Drug Testing") "While saying drug and alcohol use on the job among TTC workers is 'not rampant,' TTC officials said yesterday they didn't know how many transit workers are disciplined each year for being drunk or stoned, even as they begin considering a controversial testing regime for employees. That idea is among the safety recommendations made in a report released yesterday on the April, 2007, subway crash that killed work-car driver Antonio (Tony) Almeida, whom the report concludes smoked marijuana on his final shift, according to toxicology tests."

The article states, "While the report blames a lack of safety procedures, and not the drug use, for the accident, it also reveals that Mr. Almeida - a 38-year-old father of two - was fired a year earlier for smoking marijuana, but reinstated after his union took up his case. The report's findings have added to calls for drug and alcohol testing - vehemently opposed by the TTC's largest union - that came after a TTC bus driver was charged with impaired driving last week. But Mr. Webster and Adam Giambrone, the city councillor who chairs the TTC, said yesterday the TTC needs to compile its records before it can say how many of its workers have been disciplined for drug or alcohol."

The article adds, "The TTC has taken responsibility for the accident, pleading guilty to a Ministry of Labour charge and paying a $250,000 fine. Mr. Webster also acknowledged yesterday that the ministry's investigation into the accident revealed that a similar work-car crash had occurred on the Bloor-Danforth line in 2002, but the TTC did not address the problem. Bob Kinnear, president of Local 113 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, called the report a 'damning reflection' of the TTC's safety practices, but accused management of trying to shift blame onto the worker who died by highlighting his drug use."