An employee responsible for a minor, although unusual, accident in a company parking lot was justified in refusing to submit to an alcohol and drug test, a labour arbitrator has found.
The employee was an electrician. His position was safety-sensitive. When backing up to park a vehicle, he backed into the only other vehicle in the parking lot.
The employer demanded that he submit to a post-incident drug and alcohol test. The employee refused, citing advice that he had received from his union.
The arbitrator found that nobody had thought that the employee was impaired. There were no signs of impairment. After the accident, the employee sat through a half-hour investigative meeting and “could not give anyone in the meeting the slightest suggestion of impairment”. Two managers, who were in the meeting, did not think he was impaired. The managers concluded that he could drive home safely. The cause of the accident was obvious: the employee’s carelessness, which the employee admitted. The managers were “reasonably able to exclude the possibility that drug or alcohol impairment” may have caused the accident.
As such, the demand that the employee submit to an alcohol and drug test was not justified.
Jacobs Industrial and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 353, 2016 CanLII 198
