Current Debates

Employers can refuse to hire someone unless they pee in a cup, so if they are really concerned, they can schedule the pee test on an early Monday morning. I'm not sure how alcohol stays in your system, but with all the other avalable background checks, urine tests, credit checks, criminal checks, that should be enough.

Yes, there are things that employers need to screen for, but there must be limits. They could tap our phones, put hidden cameras in our homes, read our mail, but our cars, slip a GPS device on our car, etc. There's all sort of espionage techniques that could be used, and if they did, they would probobly end up uncovering a potential problem. But that doesn't mean they SHOULD>

I think there should be limits on how much snooping an employer can do. And since the only way to see many FB profiles is to be a friend OR to someone sneakily hack your way in, I think employers have NO business sneaking and snooping on social network sites.

I'm in favor of the 90 day probationary period. If someone was really such a bad alcoholic, it would show up in 90 days.

Actually, I don't think employers are obsessed with alcohol consumption, I think that's the handy excuse they give. I think they just want to snoop around. FB is a good way to find answers to questions that are illegal to ask, but who is going to tell someone in a press interview,

"Facebook is a good way to see who has small children, since you aren't allowed to ask that in an interview. Sometimes people post their religious and political views too. What a great way to screen out people of the "wrong" religious or political affiliation"

No, they wouldn't admit to that, so they blow smoke about how they are snooping around on social networking sites looking to make sure that every candidate they hire is a complete tee-totaler.

I'm not buying it.

I think it's basically a fishing expedition.

Here's one link to an article giving some of the excuses used to justify this.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9114560/One_in_five_employers_uses_social_networks_in_hiring_process?taxonomyId=1&intsrc=kc_top&taxonomyName=knowledge_center

<He was 17 when the pictures were taken. In the U.S., legal drinking age is 21.>

D'oh, of course it is. Sorry, I forgot.

< Other drugs are illegal.>

IMO THAT is the relevant aspect. If the guy is accused of murdering a drug dealer and talks about doing drugs on his facebook page...well that's just dumb.

<I can understand why employers would be concerned with alcohol consumption.  I've seen it happen multiple times myself where adults are drinking while at work or they are drinking heavily every night and coming in late every morning because of the hangover.  I've seen employers get burned by employees who have a problem and let their after hours drinking affect their work ethics.  So especially if a particular employer has been burned before, I could understand why they would be concerned with a prospective employees drinking habits.>

But it's completely unethical to judge a prospective employee based on the misbehaviour of someone else that they probably didn't even know.

Eg, you and I are both mothers. Let's say that an employer had hired a woman who was CONSTANTLY leaving work early for the sake of her kids, didn't get her workload done and was generally useless with her kids for an excuse.

Does that mean that it would be fair to assume that you and I would be awful employees because that employer had been previously burned by a parent?

Enjoying a drink or even getting completely wrecked on occasion does NOT equate to being an alcoholic, being hungover at work, or letting your social habits affect your work in any way.

<While I don't care if they get drunk on the weekend or smoke a joint on their off time, but I ask them to NOT do it in a shirt with our company logo o n it. You can also bet, the second time they can't make it to work on time, because they are in "hangover heaven," they don't have a job with us anymore.>

This exactly. As long as someone's social habits don't impact their work in any way, it's none of the employer's business (legal issues aside). As soon as it DOES affect their work, by all means boot them!

But it's completely unreasonable, unethical and unfair to assume that someone is going to be a problem employee because they belong to a wine club.