One of your employees at work is acting strangely. His behaviour’s not normal. He’s staggering around a bit and talking loudly.
The employee is a forklift driver. He has to be absolutely sober to do his job. He cannot under any circumstances endanger anyone else’s lives when doing his job (not like for instance the office cleaner).
DRUNK – What next?You have a no tolerance policy for drugs and alcohol at work. And the employees know this.
You go and investigate. When you approach him you get this unmistakable ‘whiff of alcohol’.
You ask him if he’s been drinking…He denies it.
You can see he’s clearly drunk on duty. And it’s not the first time you’ve caught him like this. The last time was a few months ago. You spoke to him about it. He said that he didn’t have a drinking problem and that it wouldn’t happen again. He’s generally a good employee, so you’re really ‘hacked off’. (By the way, if the employee admits to having a drinking problem … READ HERE)
But, what do you do?
You don’t have a breathalyzer kit. And even if you did, the employee would no doubt refuse to blow. In this country, you can’t even force him to take the test without his approval.
How then do you show that he’s under the influence of alcohol at work and be able to discipline the employee?
In a CCMA case similar to this, an employee was dismissed after a disciplinary hearing for being under the influence of alcohol at work.
The company said that they had noticed that the employee was unsteady on his feet, with slurred speech and a strong smell of alcohol on his breath. And therefore deemed him to be ‘drunk’.
A witness stated that “it was clear that the employee was under the influence of alcohol” as he was unsteady on his feet and staggered while walking.
The employee merely denied that he was under the influence of alcohol.
The CCMA commissioner could find no reason why the company would have fabricated its evidence; neither could the employee provide motivation why the company would do this.
The commissioner said that the two bits of evidence from the company corroborated one another and that it was therefore “probable that the employee was drunk on the day in question”.
The dismissal was held to be fair.
(Bongani Gumede v Melmoth Cartage CCMA Arbitration KN201203)
Sometimes you may be faced with a similar problem.
Where you don’t have a breathalyzer kit and you have an employee who you suspect is under the influence of alcohol at work.
My suggestion is to do the following investigation:
- Check to see whether the employee is clearly unable to perform his or her tasks properly to the required safety standards. If not, then:
- Check the employee to determine if there is an impairment of his or her faculties:
- Is there a smell of alcohol on the employee’s breath,
- Does the employee have bloodshot eyes,
- Is his/her speech slurred,
- Is the employee unsteady on his/her feet,
- Is the employee’s appearance unusually dishevelled,
- Does the employee show aggressive or confrontational behaviour?
- Get a fellow employee at a senior level, to do the same investigation separately from yours.
If both of your results are the same, i.e. they corroborate, and it is clear that the employee is under the influence of alcohol, then you should be able to go ahead and discipline the employee appropriately.
Unfortunately on some occasions it is not as simple as this and there are other factors that need to be taken into account. If you are in doubt or need more information on the procedures to follow, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
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