Bosses plan action to deal with drug misuse at work

Date: 06/05/1999

By Simon Coss

EMPLOYERS from across the EU will meet in Sweden next week to try to thrash out some common strategies for tackling the problem of drug abuse at work.

They will be taking part in a three-day conference in the city of Sundsvall, organised by the United Nations International Drugs Control Programme (UNDCP) and the Geneva-based International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Speakers from national health ministries, non-governmental organisations, the European Parliament and the Lisbon-based European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction will also attend.

The ultimate aim of the Sundsvall conference is to set up a network of anti-drugs projects across the EU based on the principle of cooperation between employers and local communities.

The organisers hope that the meeting will produce a set of standard procedures for establishing the new schemes so that participants in one country will be able to communicate easily with their counterparts elsewhere. But it remains to be seen just how successful this voluntary approach to tackling substance abuse at work will be.

The ILO's most recent report on the problem found that EU member states' approaches to the issue vary enormously. While some more liberal governments try to help employees who have drug problems with state-sponsored medical treatment, countries with more 'hardline' administrations tend to resort to punitive measures such as fines or jail sentences.

" The problem of drug and alcohol abuse is one that has met with widely divergent responses from member states," says the organisation. It adds that "few, if any" governments have specific legislation in place dealing with drugs in the workplace, with most relying instead on existing criminal, health and safety or labour laws to tackle the problem.

Critics argue such divergent approaches to drugs policy will make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to establish a Union-wide network of the kind envisaged by the Sundsvall conference.

But not everyone agrees with this negative analysis. Swedish Socialist MEP Anneli Hulthén argues that a great deal could be achieved if the social partners - employers and trade unions - in the Union's 15 member states drew up some commonly agreed strategies for tackling the problem.

" I think social partner agreements are the best way forward. This is not an area for harmonising legislation. I believe legislation should stay national when it comes to drugs," she said.

Report of a pan-European UNDP/ILO conference on tackling the problem of drug abuse at work, Sundsvall, May 1999.