Firms battle FAA over drug testing
Approximately once a month, a portable drug- and alcohol-testing lab arrives at the 64,000-square-foot Kent facility that houses Pacific Propeller International (PPI).
Workplace Systems, an independent testing consortium that PPI pays a $1,000 annual fee plus $20 per test, selects a handful of employees at random to provide breath and urine samples. The lab screens the samples to ensure PPI's workers are clean and sober, per government mandate.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has required aircraft-repair shops to administer drug tests to employees who perform "safety-sensitive" work since 1990; it added alcohol tests in 1995.
PPI maintains and overhauls high-tech propellers that power both short-range commercial aircraft and military transports, so President Jeff Heikke accepts the tests as a necessary cost of doing business.
Though the expense is not onerous, Heikke said, the program requires extensive recordkeeping and is frequently audited.
"It's quite a bit of paperwork and dotting of i's," Heikke said. Now the FAA wants to extend its drug-testing program, and PPI is not pleased. The 60-year-old company is one of four plaintiffs suing the federal government to block a rule change that the aircraft-repair industry thinks will create "a drug- and alcohol-testing regime that is irrational, unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious."
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An FAA regulation slated to take effect Monday would require that any subcontractors hired by repair stations start testing workers who handle "safety-sensitive" tasks. "The testing should follow the work," said Laura Brown, an FAA spokeswoman.
The agency put its motives more starkly in federal documents: "Only one link in the safety chain would have to fail for an accident to occur." Backing up its concerns, the FAA said around 18,000 maintenance workers tested positive for drugs in the first 15 years of the program. Roughly 540 other workers tested positive for alcohol from 1995 to 2004. PPI, the Aeronautical Repair Station Association (ARSA) and their supporters counter that testing subcontractors will add onerous costs and bureaucracy but do nothing to improve safety.
"It's a silly rule," Heikke said. "It's really affecting vendors that have no airworthiness content."
What's more, they say, the new rule could cause U.S. airlines to outsource more work to foreign repair stations, since FAA drug and alcohol rules do not apply to maintenance shops outside the U.S.
The FAA gave the industry a reprieve last week. Though the rule takes effect Monday, the agency extended the "implementation date" until Oct. 10 to give subcontractors more time to figure out what work qualifies as "safety-sensitive."
In the meantime, the federal Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., will review the suit filed by PPI, two other repair stations and ARSA seeking to have the new language thrown out altogether.
Boeing is a member of ARSA but is not taking part in the lawsuit. "We do sympathize with those businesses that may be impacted financially by this ruling," said Cindy Wall, a Boeing spokeswoman. The company hopes the FAA and ARSA can work out an agreement that supports airplane safety and minimizes costs, she said. Boeing operates four repair stations, including one at Boeing Field in Seattle.
Source: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com
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