The time has arrived for a standardized process for random drug and alcohol testing of construction workers on many major job sites in Southeast Michigan.

Throughout much of this decade, the owner and contractor communities have talked about requiring men and women in the trades who work on their job sites to be tested for drug and alcohol use.

This summer, the talk is over, and reality is setting in. Construction workers are required to pass drug and alcohol tests before going to work on no less than 19 major projects, including some on the property of Daimler-Chrysler, DTE Energy, Ford Motor Co., General Motors, and Northwest Airlines. Now, provisions for random testing are being put into place.

The Greater Detroit Building Trades Council supports the idea of drug and alcohol testing for construction workers. First and foremost, doing what we can to eliminate the use of drugs and alcohol on construction sites can't help but improve safety.

Second, submitting to the test is in keeping with an employment trend from around the country - employers are increasingly requiring a more secure work environment by requiring drug and alcohol testing of their own employees as a condition of employment.

Third, having a ready workforce that is drug- and alcohol-tested is a great marketing tool, and is one more feature we can offer employers as an incentive to hire union. We can rightly claim that a major portion of our workforce has willingly submitted to a drug test, greatly reducing the potential liability of contractors and owners.

Fourth, if a worker does have a substance abuse problem, a positive result may provide him or her with a wake-up call to get some help.

The Greater Detroit Building Trades Council, together with Management and Unions Serving Together (MUST) and the Great Lakes Construction Alliance, have developed a program that has involved hiring the providers of the MOST drug screening system. Developed by the Boilermakers International Union, it gives employers a reliable way to test workers while maintaining privacy for workers. There are 4,000 building trades workers currently in the system.

Here's how it works:

Each worker can voluntarily submit to an annual drug test. The status of the employee is available through a plastic, scannable employee card. On the job, the employer can scan the card or access the necessary information through a restricted access, toll-free number to see if the construction worker is in compliance with the program.

A worker's status is available only to a single medical review officer, who can only tell a hiring contractor whether a worker is listed as "current" or "non-current." Privacy is maintained because "noncurrent" could mean that a worker didn't pass a drug test, but it could also mean he or she hasn't taken the test.

The procedure provides portability of the worker's drug-free status from project to project. There's also a random testing aspect of the program designed to test 25 percent of the program's participants per year.

On projects that require random testing, the enrolled employers will be submitting on a monthly basis a listing of the employees who are eligible for the random testing. That list will be forwarded to MOST for random selection, which uses double-blind software to pick workers.

After MOST randomly generates that list, forms for the selected employees will be made out and delivered to their job sites with pre-approved test collectors. The selected workers will immediately be required to submit a sample for testing. Breath alcohol testing will be required at the same time.

Some building trade union leaders support the concept of drug and alcohol testing, some don't. The same can be said of individual workers, some of whom may feel the testing is an infringement on their rights. But on projects whose owners require drug and alcohol testing, the workers really don't have a choice.

Whatever your opinion, it's important to keep in mind that the drive to implement a system for drug and alcohol testing is coming straight out of the owner community, and the screening system that's in place is totally voluntary. Workers don't have to pee in a cup if they don't want to. They can continue working in their craft at job sites that do not require testing.

However, if the opportunity arises for you to work at the $1.2 billion Northwest Airlines midfield terminal project, you're going to have to submit to drug and alcohol testing. The same goes for General Motors, which is requiring drug and alcohol testing on all of its construction projects as of Aug. 1. Ford Motor Co. has three major projects ongoing that require the testing.

Many projects sponsored by the above owners are operated under GPA, NMA or project labor agreements. When members voluntarily submit to drug testing on these projects, an all-union project is guaranteed.

And the list of projects and employers who require drug testing is only going to get longer in the future.