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Monday, September 08, 2008

Mine Agency Proposes Mandatory Drug Testing

The Bush administration has proposed yet another rule that may be in violation of the controversial Bolten memo. On May 9, White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten instructed federal agencies to propose by June 1 any rule they wished to finalize by the end of the Bush administration. However, a number of agencies are rushing through controversial rules that defy Bolten's deadline, and the White House seems to have no objections.

This time the culprit is the Mine Safety and Health Administration. MSHA is proposing to require mine operators to test employees in "safety-sensitive" positions for drug and alcohol use. Here are some of the provisions from the proposed rule, which MSHA published today in the Federal Register:

• "Any applicant for a safety-sensitive position must be tested for the presence of drugs before performing safety-sensitive job duties."
• "Any applicant for a safety-sensitive position must receive an alcohol test after a conditional offer of employment has been made and before performing safety-sensitive job duties."
• "Mine operators must randomly conduct unannounced alcohol and drug tests of their miners."
• " A mine operator shall conduct an alcohol and/or drug test when the mine operator has reasonable suspicion to believe that the miner has misused a prohibited substance."

(MSHA defines safety-sensitive job duties as, "Any type of work activity where a momentary lapse of critical concentration could result in an accident, injury, or death.")

The Bush administration is working on this rule with surprising swiftness, considering its poor record on mine safety and occupational safety in general. And MSHA will only be taking public comment on the rule for 30 days. (The typical public comment period lasts at least 60 days.)

MSHA has been considering the rule since at least 2005, but the evidence indicates it may be making a final push to get the rule out the door before the end of the Bush administration.

Such a push may be welcomed by industry (or is industry behind the push?). Ken Ward of the Charleston Gazette reports, "Coal industry officials have long sought an MSHA rule to require drug testing of miners." For another perspective, Ward adds, "[B]ut the United Mine Workers union has questioned the need for such testing and worried about the specifics of how companies would carry out such testing."