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From: kfl@AI.AI.MIT.EDU
Newsgroups: mod.politics
Subject: Firing
Message-ID: <12268567468.17.MCGREW@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Mon, 5-Jan-87 15:53:55 EST
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Posted: Mon Jan  5 15:53:55 1987
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    From: mcgeer%sirius.Berkeley.EDU@BERKELEY.EDU (Rick McGeer)

            The major point is still this.  Employers have a hard time
    establishing to a court that employees aren't doing an adequate
    job.

  They shouldn't have to, any more than employees should have to
establish anything in court in order to resign.

    So long as employers can't can people for arbitrary reasons,
    you're going to have things like widespread drug testing.

  Probably true.  Which makes it ironic that most opponents of drug
testing apparently oppose individual rights for employers.

    Why?  Courts may not accept "he was doing a lousy job" as adequate
    for dismissal, but "he snorted enough cocaine to choke a
    medium-sized horse" ought to do the trick.

  Sad but true.  Of course employers ought not fire someone simply
because they use drugs, unless the drug use causes them to do poor
work.  And if they are doing poor work, it is hardly relevant whether
it is due to drug use or not.
  (Which is not to say that employers should be forbidden by law from
requiring drug tests - in case anyone misinterpets my saying
"employers ought not" as meaning "there ought to be a law".)

            Liberals take note: *this* is the effect of labour
    protection and civil rights legislation.  I wonder how our friends
    in the ADA, the ACLU and the AFL-CIO feel now?  Of course, if they
    regretted, this would imply that liberals can learn -- in which
    case, of course, they'd be conservatives.

  More likely they would be libertarians or objectivists.

                                                              ...Keith

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