Think so ?
Drug tests are used all the time to get rid of people due to personal vendettas or when they don't have just cause to out right fire some one.
I used to be a supervisor for a pretty large utility contractor. One day i get a call from our regional manager telling me that i have to take a drug test the next day but not to worry about the results. I told him i was not worried because i have never failed one.
The next day i found out that we had another supervisor that had to take a drug test also. He failed and was fired. I found out later that he was suspected of taking kick backs from sub contractors but it could not be proven so they had an employee invite this supervisor to a party where people were smoking weed and he joined in .
Another example.
I was supervisor for another company a few years after the above incident. They hired a saftey inspector and lets just say he and i butted heads quite a few times. I was told by several employees that he was asking questions about me and it was evident to them he was trying to dig up dirt on me.
One monday he pops in and names off 3 guys who have to go take a drug test that morning. One of them was my son . one of the three named came up to me and said he knew he was going to fail and if there was anything i could do about it. I told him there was nothing i could do.
So two days later the safety inspector comes into my office and informs me my son failed his drug test and wanted to know what i was going to do about it. The guy who came to me before the drug twsts were taken somehow passed . I call my son into my office and fired him on the spot.
That evening i ask my son what the hell was he doing failing a drug test.? Well short story is he went and spent the weekend with a family who also worked for me. A husband ...wife and son crew. They all smoked pot over that weekend. A blind man could see that this family was tight with the saftey inspector and my son had been set up.
I had this family workimg on a out of town bid job with a couple of other crews and it took me a few weeks of driving my personal vehicle out and watching this crew but i caught them padding their time sheets. I fired the whole crew. The saftey director came complaing to me about i apparently singled them out and not my other crews on the same job. I said yea like you singled my son out. I said you keep fucking with me and you will be next down the road.
Well i wound up quitting and going into bussiness for myself and i learned later that this safety director was fired .
Ya. In past positions in private sector I’ve gotten phone calls along the lines of “you’re going to do a random test on 10 of the people on that site. One of them is going to be X employee. Pick the others at random.”
Sure, it “shouldn’t” happen. But it’s very common.