Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Businesses

Amazon Relaxes Drug Testing Policies, Will Lobby To Legalize Marijuana (cnbc.com) 81

Posted by BeauHD from the times-they-are-a-changin' dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Amazon is further relaxing its screening policies for marijuana, as it ramps up support for federal legislation to legalize the drug. In a blog post Tuesday, Amazon HR boss Beth Galetti wrote that the company has "reinstated the employment eligibility" for former employees and applicants who were fired or deferred during random or pre-employment marijuana screenings. "Pre-employment marijuana testing has disproportionately affected communities of color by stalling job placement and, by extension, economic growth, and we believe this inequitable treatment is unacceptable," Galetti said. Amazon first announced in June it would no longer screen some of its workers for marijuana. The only job candidates Amazon will screen for the drug are those applying for positions regulated by the Department of Transportation, such as truck drivers and heavy equipment operators. Amazon also said it would still do impairment checks on the job and will test for drugs and alcohol after any incident.

The company relaxed its marijuana standards after recognizing that a growing number of U.S. states are legalizing cannabis, Galetti said. It also realized that doing so would help it lure more job applicants in an increasingly tight labor market. "Amazon's pace of growth means that we are always looking to hire great new team members, and we've found that eliminating pre-employment testing for cannabis allows us to expand our applicant pool," Galetti said. Amazon is also lobbying the federal government to legalize marijuana. The company in June said it supports the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act, which aims to decriminalize cannabis at the federal level, expunge criminal records and invest in impacted communities. On Tuesday, Galetti said Amazon recently endorsed a similar bill, called the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act. In a letter to lawmakers about the bill this month, Amazon urged Congress to expunge federal nonviolent marijuana crimes and allow for resentencing of any person serving time in federal prison for those crimes, while pushing states to take similar steps.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Amazon Relaxes Drug Testing Policies, Will Lobby To Legalize Marijuana More

Amazon Relaxes Drug Testing Policies, Will Lobby To Legalize Marijuana

Comments Filter:
  • Now please excuse me while I take a piss in a water bottle to meet my quotas working in inventory.

    • can I trade my smoke breaks for piss breaks at Amazon?

      • What makes you think you get any breaks at Amazon?

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          I had lots of breaks and long lunches when I worked there ... as an engineer. I'm sure C-suites get all the breaks they want too. We even had the luxury to take the time to appreciate a joke or quip

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      You do realize that the "piss in a bottle" claim was invented by an author trying to sell books, right? No one has documented that it happens in real life.

      It does happen to delivery drivers though, but that's not a problem exclusive to Amazon contractors but to everyone in the entire delivery industry. There just aren't enough public restrooms available any more.

  • Amazon 420 coming soon. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Major_Disorder ( 5019363 ) on Tuesday September 21, 2021 @05:25PM (#61818755)
    You know they are not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. There has to be a profit in it for them. My bet is they will be selling and delivering by the end of the year.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fazig ( 2909523 )
      Possibly. Another possibility would to give their employees the option to be paid in Marijuana. Paid by money that almost literally grows on trees (well, not a tree, but a plant nonetheless).

      Knowing some stoners from my past, there's a number among them who'd see being paid in quality weed as a selling point for a workplace, even if the work conditions are otherwise crap.

    • There has to be a profit in it for them.

      They stated quite clearly why they are relaxing testing; they're having trouble hiring low skilled (and by extension, low paid) workers who can pass the tests. Which is indicative of a society with too many people who have no viable prospects and turn to vice as a way to deal with life.

      The lobbying for legalization is quite obviously because they see this growing market as a Prime target for delivery of weed (and junk food.)

      • I think it's more indicative of a society with insufficient economic mobility coupled with reasonable people making reasonable decisions to consume a relatively harmless substance which they enjoy.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Yeah. It turns out all those negative stories about working at Amazon is actually turning people away from working at Amazon.

      Amazon is facing a hiring crunch - they need people, but no one's applying for jobs. Since Amazon doesn't want to pay people more, or fix the problems at the warehouses, they want to add to the pool of people those who may have avoided warehouse jobs because they often have drug tests and such.

      Considering marijuana is already perfectly legal in Washington state, Amazon HQ, and Amazon'

      • from personal experience in the past... can perform menial simple tasks perfectly well while stoned, and feel quite good doing it where doing it sober would be devastatingly mind-numbing.

        However when unexpected things occur that demand you to take decisive action out of the ordinary, being baked is counter-productive and paranoia sets in...

    • keeping your slaves docile helps control them better.

    • More of a PR move. This will be a point in their column for a nonzero amount of progressives and libertarians in the general public. Not to mention their elite non-trucker, non-forklift employees, who might also enjoy dank nugs.

      Amazon can "take a stand" - and even in a nontrivial, impactful way - without doing anything that's going to trigger either of the party duopoly in the US. Republicans have been mostly ignoring the word "marijuana" in recent years. Still pushing the rest of the drug war, of course -

    • I was thinking the exact same thing when I read this item. Amazon could obliterate a fair number of dispensaries. However they would also have to change some state laws to allow them to move product as well, since there is a fair amount of regulation on that side.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      More like they have trouble finding enough employees with the old policy...

  • I see a big problem... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Morpeth ( 577066 ) on Tuesday September 21, 2021 @05:26PM (#61818763)

    Any packages with chips, doritos, popcorn, pretzels etc will be opened and ransacked due to all the employees with the munchies

  • Why did they ever do drug screenings? (Score:4, Informative)

    by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Tuesday September 21, 2021 @05:34PM (#61818787) Journal

    Why did they even screen for drugs anyway? I would not work somewhere like that just on general principles even though my recreational drugs are limited to alcohol. Bad companies to work for do obnoxious things like pointlessly invade privacy.

    • Re:Why did they ever do drug screenings? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 21, 2021 @05:46PM (#61818827)

      Why did they even screen for drugs anyway? I would not work somewhere like that just on general principles even though my recreational drugs are limited to alcohol. Bad companies to work for do obnoxious things like pointlessly invade privacy.

      Posting anon to avoid any potential ties back to my place of employment

      Most businesses have insurance providers that will not cover them without a drug test policy in place. I know for a fact that the company I work for, which is heavily staffed by musicians who are obviously taking part in recreational drugs that are not limited to alcohol, was forced by their insurance company to implement a mandatory test policy.

      Every employee gets screened as part of their interview, then after any workplace accident, they get screened again. Those with dangerous warehouse positions (IE forklift drivers) have to get tested randomly.

      The reason I know for a fact this was an insurance implementation is that the owner of the company complained about it at one point in time when meeting with new hires. Literally apologized to them all about the screening and sincerely seemed upset about it.

      If the company were purely a coding company or something like that, I could see that being invasive and even see an argument against the insurance companies, but most companies that have any sort of public interaction, heavy machinery, product liabilities, etc. are likely going to have some sort of drug testing policy in place. Even if it is by rules of the insurance company.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Xenx ( 2211586 )
          The federal government is anti-drugs. They WANT the testing to be done. That aside, it would depend on what your interpretation of "immediate life or death" is. There are plenty of instances that I wouldn't put in that category that I believe should have at least some drug testing involved. Not going to nail down specifics on where/when/how testing is needed. Jobs involving driving vehicles, caregiving, and enforcement would be prime examples of jobs that I believe should have some form of testing.

          • There was a company that did work for the Feds. The Feds mandated the company have a drug policy.

            So the policy the company came up with was "Bring enough for everybody." The Feds had to admit this *was* a policy and quit bothering them.

      • you were lied to.

        its bullshit.

        companies can fully decide to test or not test. some roles are mandated but software is NOT. NOT BY ANYONE.

        they lie to you and you believe it.

        I've worked for companies that dont test (I've never been tested and wont ever submit to such) and yet they 'do federal work' (the usual excuse HR gives, which is also a lie) and there have also been companies that test some people but not others (another lie HR tells is that it has to be all or nothing; and that's just not true, either

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      Warehouse work can be dangerous, you're working with equipment that is heavy and/or automated which sometimes appears to have a mind of its own. They conducted drug tests for the same reason that FedEx does, they don't want people getting injured on the job.

    • Why did they even screen for drugs anyway?

      Yeah, if they operate any machinery, you want them to be sober. That's not even a thing to argue.

      As products go, this is perfect cargo for the drones, scripts and weed. Make sure to pick it up before the cat does

      • Most machines are built to used by people who may not be operating at 100% all the time. If someone falls asleep due to narcolepsy, the machine they're operating shouldn't take the opportunity to kill a room full of children and liquidate pensions.

        There's no absolute requirement that you would screen for drugs just because people are operating machinery.

        • Well, you won't operate any of mine if you are intoxicated. Pretty damn simple rule. To tell the truth, I don't believe you're serious

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      American companies like drug tests. A US company wanted me to come and consult for a few days and told me I'd have to take a routine drug test first. They dropped the requirement, I assume when they couldn't find anyone who would administer it. Workplace drug testing is illegal here, except in special circumstances involving safety.

      • The Reagan 'War on Drugs' created contractual requirements for drug testing if ANY federal grant money was received by the company

        As states have legalized cannabis there have been challenges to urine testing (which can show positive when the person is not intoxicated), and most companies that have to test, and are present in states like California, have moved to cheek-swab tests that can show use in the past 8 hours

        That said, I have seen a panicking marketing manager use hand soap and paper towels to scrub

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          Here it's a human rights violation.

          It sure sounds like a violation of a violation of "the right of the People to be secure in their persons," but you know.

      • At least some of this stems from litigious actions. Insurance companies want to make sure you're screening for drug use before they sell you cheap insurance to cover workplace injuries. Companies can see the bottom line: drug test and get a X% discount, or skip testing and pay X% higher premiums for your whole staff.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          The private for-profit healthcare/insurance complex and an unwillingness to protect human rights in the workplace does make a pretty trap, doesn't it?

    • That's the major one. If someone gets injured by somebody who's stoned they'll be lawsuits. It wasn't worth the hassle when there was a glut of cheap labor in the market. They could have lobbied sooner to legalize marijuana but it's extremely useful to have marijuana illegal for a variety of political reasons that I went into on another post (e.g. Richard Nixon). So there wasn't a lot of incentive to go to the trouble of getting it legalized until they had those labor shortages forcing up the wages they pay

    • Why did they even screen for drugs anyway? I would not work somewhere like that just on general principles even though my recreational drugs are limited to alcohol. Bad companies to work for do obnoxious things like pointlessly invade privacy.

      I support legalization, voted for it in my state, but no, I don't want to work around baked or drunk employees, especially if it impacts their ability to do work. Take machinery operators. They have 3 choices: drug testing, do nothing and let a crane operator kill someone because he's high as a kite, or be paranoid and fire people who "act impaired." ...which is really hard to prove until it's too late. Given that if you operate heavy machinery or are a first responder, it's literally "life or death."

      • Take machinery operators.

        Yes, but from TFS (yeah yeah I know), Amazon is still going to be testing those employees. So this article is about drug testing for all the other ones who aren't going to be working on dangerous machinery.

        Now if you work in software, drug testing is unheard of, but if you acted high in the office, it would just be rude and I wouldn't want to work with you.

        Sure!

        But drug testing isn't unheard of in those situations.

        I support an employer doing drug testing...for insurance, safety,

        • Performance is a bullshit reason IMO. If they're performing badly you don't need a drug test, you can fire them on performance grounds. That also allows you to fire employees who are just useless too.

          Yeah, but ever work in a large corporate environment? :) The standards for termination is quite high. My guess is to prevent them from being sued for discrimination. The legal standard is much less than most realize, but get a good lawyer and folks have gotten great settlements with vague claims, allegedly. I haven't seen the cases myself, but it's on the minds of every HR dept. Talk to a lawyer, they say they're difficult to win. Talk to HR, they freak the fuck out about it.

          I had an employee who

      • They have 3 choices: drug testing, do nothing and let a crane operator kill someone because he's high as a kite, or be paranoid and fire people who "act impaired."

        There is a fourth choice: fire anyone who's not good at operating the equipment, regardless of why. But that would require actual management, and management doesn't and can't do that because they have no fucking clue how. No one can effectively manage anyone whose job they haven't done, or at least been near for a decent period of time while working so they can see how it's supposed to be done. But we actively avoid making people who actually know how to do things into managers these days, with the result t

  • How brave of them (Score:4, Funny)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Tuesday September 21, 2021 @05:35PM (#61818795) Journal

    You might even say it's a brave new world.

  • If they can't find enough people willing to work a shit job while not high enough to be impaired the shares of the company will lose equity.

  • Watch how fast Uncle Sam listens to Amazon instead of a majority of voters. I'm in Canada right now where Cannabis stores are all over. Guess what happened? Absolutely nothing.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by aitikin ( 909209 )

      Watch how fast Uncle Sam listens to Amazon instead of a majority of voters. I'm in Canada right now where Cannabis stores are all over. Guess what happened? Absolutely nothing.

      Well, you forgot the tax revenue [reuters.com]

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      Tax revenues probably improved, at least that's what we've seen in Washington state.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jonwil ( 467024 )

      I don't think even Amazon is big enough to overcome the vested interests who want to keep weed from being legalized.

      Big Pharma wants weed to stay illegal because people are taking weed instead of their patented (and profitable) drugs.

      Companies that make Alcohol and Tobacco products want weed to stay illegal because otherwise people would be buying weed instead of booze and smokes.

      The prison-industrial complex wants weed to stay illegal because they get good money from all the weed users getting locked up in

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z80a ( 971949 )

      You can't actually ban products that are in a demand from millions of people.
      The options are regulate it or not regulate it.
      Drugs, prostitution, guns. It's a great waste of time and manpower.
      Of course, there are many people that profit off the "war on drugs" that don't want those things to be legalized.

    • According to our government officials in the wonderful(ly shitty) state of South Dakota, when Colorado allowed recreational marijuana it turned the state into a dystopian hellscape, filled with junkies wanting handouts and nobody willing to do any work whatsoever. It's been used as a reason to not implement a recreational marijuana law here even though the voters passed it by something like sixty percent. Because all that tax revenue Colorado generates from the sales is destroying their economy or some su

  • Why? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Pre-employment marijuana testing has disproportionately affected communities of color

    If one wants to pull themselves up out of poverty, getting stoned isn't a great plan.

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by rowls ( 225157 )

      Yeah, I did not understand this quote at all. I had always understood the agrument to be that drug use in communities of color was comparable to drug use in white communities, but that enforcement was focused on communities of color so incarcertation rates for drug crimes was higher, and systemically racist. Assuming that Amazon's random drug testing was truely random, if drug testing disproportionately affects communities of color, then people in those communities must be using drugs at higher rates. That

      • If drug use holds across race, but whites are more likely to apply for and obtain jobs where drug testing isn't implemented, then you are structurally screening out more non-whites.

    • If one wants to pull themselves out of poverty, being denied access to a job for getting intoxicated from a plant that is less dangerous that alcohol is a major hurdle.

      Furthermore, if one wants to get out of poverty, getting arrested, receiving a felony and potential prison time for using the same relatively harmless plant is a real stopping point

      Cannabis has never really been that dangerous, and the punishment has ALWAYS been worse than the "crime", but then cannabis laws were set up in the 70's by Nixon t

      • While Nixon certainly got the ball rolling, the flood of police action and lengthy sentences didn't explode until the 80s and 90s, in a bipartisan love affair with Joe Biden being more responsible than any other single person. If you're looking to blame someone for where we are now, Biden is the man you want. Anslinger was even more openly racist; you're no doubt familiar with "Reefer Madness", right? That was his era, before Nixon. The Anti-drug abuse act in the 80s and the crime bill in the 90s are the bi

        • To be honest, I remember Reagan being the primary pusher of the War on Drugs in the 80's, but there was also a big push after the death of Len Bias that resulted in out of balance punishment for crack cocaine.

          Since Biden was present during these drug warrior moments, I hope that he can do a 'Only Nixon could have gone to China' moment on rescinding the current punishment model and turning hard drug action to treatment and recognizing that cannabis is "mostly harmless"

    • Neither is getting drunk, but because alcohol has been racially associated with white people, no one suggests we take hair samples from Dylan and Cody to see if they consumed alcohol in the last month before we give them a job.

  • Well, with their money, it should be about a day's work. Spread it around, boyz...

  • I'm always surprised it's still illegal (Score:3)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday September 21, 2021 @06:01PM (#61818881)
    I get that it's useful for the Republican party for it to be (no, this isn't me trolling, search YouTube for "The Sinister Reason Weed is Illegal", Nixon did it to attack the left). But there's so much money on the table.

    Then again, The GOP is pushing voter suppression bills in every single state. Once that's done maybe they won't need to use weed (and the disenfranchisement of voters that comes with a criminal record) to win elections anymore. Down in Florida they got caught red handed [youtube.com] and nobody seems to care.

  • No sober person could willingly want to work for that slave drivers.

  • Makes a ton of sense (Score:3)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday September 21, 2021 @06:30PM (#61818965)

    To me it's never made sense that alcohol is legal and marijuana is not. Both can be used perfectly responsibly by people, so just detecting MJ in someone's urine from past use says nothing about how responsible they are as a person.

    I've had all kinds of really good co-workers in the past that used MJ and you couldn't tell unless they told you.

    I think on balance I'd rather have drivers that were slightly on MJ than not because then at least they would be more chill in traffic!

  • Given the corporate history of Amazon in relation to how it treats employees, I feel this is more of a "we want to get into shipping this stuff" than anything.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I'm a little sad about this whole topic of legalizing marijuana use. As you know, smoking regular cigarettes cause tremendous harm to the body. I found an article on https://studyhippo.com/essay-e... [studyhippo.com] where it is clearly stated that there is no safe smoking - everything, from cigarettes to hookah and even many herbs, causes a very negative reaction in the body, even if at first we do not see it or do not notice it.

Slashdot Top Deals

The use of money is all the advantage there is to having money. -- B. Franklin

Close