Louisville employers having trouble finding workers who can pass a drug test

A recent accident at a Southern Indiana manufacturer didn't raise suspicions at first.

Two men were working together, and one fed a sheet of metal into a machine. The other hit a switch to drop a heavy plate to stamp the sheets. But the sheet handler was still pulling his hand free when his partner hit the switch and crushed his hand.

As it happened, the accident might have been avoidable – or that's what bosses concluded when the switch operator's mandatory drug test came back positive, said Amanda Alexander, who works for a staffing firm that fills manufacturing jobs.

The accident is indicative of a growing problem as the Louisville area battles a drug epidemic: Employers are having a hard time finding and keeping workers who can pass a drug test. People of all ages are testing positive, and for hard drugs, leading to unsafe working conditions and causing some employers to cut their workforces.

“It’s a real problem. It’s too high a percentage” of workers testing positive for drugs, said Kerry Stemler, president and owner of KM Stemler Co., a New Albany, Indiana-based commercial and industrial contractor and real-estate developer. 

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Several large local employers, including GE Appliances, say they've seen an increase in the number of people who fail pre-employment screenings. And the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book surveys of economic activity in April, May and July found the same thing.  

UPS’s Jim Mayer said the failure rate on drug tests at the shipping giant has hovered at about 4 percent in recent years.

Other employers say they've halted pre-employment screenings because the companies couldn’t fill the openings if they did, said Stemler, who serves on the Indiana Finance Authority and formerly on the Louisville and Southern Indiana Bridges Authority.

Alexander, who is the recruiting manager at Transformation Network in Clarksville, Indiana, said that roughly half of her agency's job candidates don’t show up after they learn they’ll be screened for drugs.  

And one of every 10 people who submit to a test fail, she said. The job candidates are increasingly using hard drugs, such as cocaine, opiates and benzodiazepine – sedatives sold under the trade names Xanax, Ativan and Valium.

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Some candidates who return a positive screening insist that they have a doctor's prescription – but many don’t return when told they’ll undergo more sensitive urinalysis to verify what they're on, said Alexander, who declined to identify the company where the stamping accident took place.

The incident was one of four – out of five – where workers tested positive for drugs after recent accidents on the job, she said. 

Failed tests exceed US average

The problem isn't confined to job candidates, however.

Nearly 70 percent of 22 million Americans age 18 and older who use illicit drugs work full-time and part-time jobs, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration.

And the proportion of Louisville-area workers testing positive for drugs exceeds the national average by 15 percent, with 4.8 percent of tests coming back positive, according to data provided by Quest Diagnostics, one of the world’s largest employment drug testing companies.

Results for the region – which encompasses Louisville and its six surrounding counties, including Southern Indiana – also show drug use among employees has steadily increased over the past five years. While marijuana was the most prevalent illicit drug detected in Louisville’s general workforce, positive tests for heroin were 150 percent higher than the national average in both 2015 and 2016, the latest year for which data was available.

Quest's data also showed that the region's use of amphetamines, cocaine and opiates grew between 2012 and 2016.

Private employers aren’t required to test employees, but nationally, more than half screen job candidates before hiring them.

David Clancy, the executive chef for two O’Shea’s restaurants in the area, said his eateries and other restaurants where he’s worked have eliminated pre-employment testing because there's no way they could find the cooks, waiters, dishwashers and other workers to keep the doors open.

“It’s a tight labor market, and it’s difficult to retain (workers) even in an ideal setting,” he said.

But under Reagan-era laws, pre-employment screenings and other tests are required for some workers, including school employees, government workers and contractors on a variety of jobs funded by the government. In safety-sensitive positions such as driving a truck or school bus, employees undergo annual physicals, random screenings and post-accident tests.

At Bagshaw Trucking in Memphis, Indiana, the company averages two firings a year after workers fail random drug tests – which are mandatory by law for the industry, company founder Greg Bagshaw said.

The guys who test positive now are doing serious drugs, like opioids, usually not pot, Bagshaw said. And “it’s not your 25-year-olds. It’s 40- and 50-year-olds.”

Because his federally regulated workplace must maintain a zero-tolerance policy, the offending employee is out the door. 

When a positive test comes back, he often thinks “Geez, he’s not a young guy. He’s got kids, a family. Why take the risk?”

A dilemma for businesses

Barry Sample, director of science and technology at Quest, said the issue presents a dilemma for employers.

"Employers are not substance-abuse experts, and they don't want to be," he said. "They're trying to come up with ways to run safe operations. (The situation) is becoming a factor in their business plans."

National studies show that workplace drug use declined in the late 1990s then began to increase after 2004. Various organizations and their researchers acknowledge that it's nearly impossible to calculate the economic harm from unfilled jobs, from wages and opportunities lost to families and individuals, and overall lost productivity.

A 2016 study calculated the annual economic burden from the nation’s opioid epidemic alone at $78 billion, according to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the federal Centers for Disease Control.

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But even though construction and development are booming, Stemler and Bagshaw said they've opted to maintain leaner businesses to avoid the hassle of finding drug-free workers and others who are reliable.

Stemler once had 90 people on his payroll, but now it's at 30 because the company got out of commercial trucking, which carried high liability costs and requires drivers to be clean to avoid safety issues. His company now focuses on real estate development and general contracting.

He said he doesn’t even do random drug tests anymore because it doesn’t seem worth the trouble.

Bagshaw said his crew once operated 90 dump trucks and flatbeds to haul heavy equipment to job sites. But that fleet has been trimmed to 55.

"There's going to be a lot happening in our area" in construction, Bagshaw said. But investing $1 million to add to the fleet isn't an option because "you wouldn't be able to find the people." 

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While the statistics may seem troubling, the upside is the Quest data show more than 90 percent of tested workers in the Louisville area are clean, said Eric Burnette, director of labor market intelligence for KentuckianaWorks, which focuses on increasing the region’s job skills.

“The overwhelming majority are not testing positive at all,” Burnette said.

Bagshaw and Stemler said they've responded to the drug epidemic by beefing up pay and benefits to keep good employees. 

“There are good people out there, they’re just hard to find,” Stemler said.  

Reporter Grace Schneider can be reached at 502-582-4082 or gschneider@courier-journal.com.