Wednesday, April 25, 2012

May Cause Drowsiness ... Or Worse

A few days ago I posted about the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) being used to require around 300,000 swimming pools to install hydraulic lifts -- at a cost of over $1 billion -- to help disabled swimmers enter and exit the pools. That's a prime example of regulatory overkill.

Now we have this example of regulatory nonsense trumping common sense. From the Cato Institute:
…Common sense dictates that any medication that carries with it a warning that it “may cause drowsiness” or that the patient should “use caution” if operating machinery may pose a risk in the workplace. It is for this reason that many employers adopt a policy requiring employees to self report the use of prescription pain killers. This is especially important in potentially dangerous workplaces such as manufacturing and construction.

In a recent action that defies common sense, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has taken the position that such policies are unlawful under the Americans With Disabilities Act. The ADA prohibits an employer from conducting “medical inquiries” without a business reason to do so. In EEOC v. Product Fabricators, Inc., an action in federal court in Minnesota, the EEOC required a manufacturing employer to abandon its policy of encouraging employees to inform supervisors if they are under the influence of narcotic pain killers such as Vicodin. The EEOC took the position that an employer cannot ask about prescription pain killer usage unless it has “objective” evidence that an employee is impaired on the job.

This places employers in a very difficult position….
That last line is a candidate for Understatement of the Year. The employer can either wait until someone is maimed or killed by an employee operating heavy or lethal machinery under the influence of a narcotic...


... guaranteeing an attack by a bevy of ambulance-chasing shysters, or else press the issue with its employees and face an EEOC action, most likely coupled with an individual lawsuit from the 'wronged' employee.


Pick your poison.

These two cases are excellent illustrations of how the obama administration is using its administrative powers to hamstring American businesses. We have got to get that walking disaster out of office before this country is irredeemably ruined.

6 comments:

Pascvaks said...

If anyone thinks the EEOC is an aberation, a fly in the ointment so to speak, let me (sarc on) be the first to inform them that the EEOC is one of the Best Performing offices in the United States Gobblement.

I'm sorry, I've finally come to the conclusion that the ONLY Solution left is to turn this country, in fact the entire hemisphere, back over to the original inhabitants and go back to where we came from. This will finally clear the air, the water, and the environment of its worst scurge and put things back in order the way they were 500 years ago. There's definitely something in the water on this side of the planet that is not conducive to the IQ's of life forms from the other side of the world.

If we don't clear out of here in the next 4 years something bad is going to happen.

PS: And we need to level all man-made structures, dispose of all contaminants properly, replant the countryside in native species, bring back the buffalo and American Elms, and restock all the lakes and streams too. If we don't, something bad's going to happen.(sarc off)
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No joke! There's gotta' be something in the water to make people this stupid. The last time it happened was in Germany before WWI. It like a plague!;-)

CenTexTim said...

And who provides us with water? The Government!

Coincidence? I think not... ;-)

Old NFO said...

Gah... we need to STOP this governing by regulation... sigh

CenTexTim said...

NFO - truer words were never spoken...

CharlieDelta said...

The forklift picture reminds me of an old warehouse job I had where we shipped Naval ATAC freight from North Island to contracted repairs places all over the east coast. Every so often we had to load these containers that looked like bombs into the eastbound trucks that drove them to MCAS Cherry Point or Norfolk. Whenever a new driver would show up, we would tell them to be "extra careful" driving their load because they were hauling "dud" ordinance to be exploded underground by the military. Most of them never bought it for a second, but the ones that did had this facial expression of WTF! and OH SH*T! at the same time. It was hilarious to us dock workers, and the drivers never heard the end of it from the entire warehouse crew.

CenTexTim said...

Screwing with the newbies is always fun.