In most situations the NLRB’s long established Weingarten doctrine can be applied in a fairly straight-forward fashion. But I still get questions regarding the interplay of drug and alcohol testing when it comes to Weingarten. This is probably due to the fact that the Ralphs Grocery Company decision, which issued in 2014, is a relatively new expansion of the Weingarten doctrine wherein an employee has the right to consult a union steward prior to taking a drug test. And then more recently, in Manhattan Beer Distributors the Board expanded Weingarten rights further, in the context of drug and alcohol testing, as the Board established that an employee had a right to a union steward to be physically present for the alcohol or drug test. An employer need only wait a “reasonable amount of time” for the union representative to be physically present; however, that time will be a function of the substance being tested for and the effect of time on the outcome of the test results. In other words, alcohol will probably have a shorter timeline in terms of what is a reasonable period, versus marijuana, which stays in the system for days, if not weeks.
Again, the employee must request the union representation. There is no duty on the part of the employer, absent a contractual requirement otherwise, to seek out union representation for these circumstances. So be aware of these new restrictions and apply them wisely, otherwise your discipline will more than likely be found unlawful and an otherwise clean discharge will turn into the nightmare of reinstatement and full backpay.