Workplace drug testing as social control.

Abstract

In this article, the emergence of employee drug screening is examined in the context of the historical development of the principle and practice of workplace surveillance. The authors trace the evolution of disciplinary and control systems from the early Industrial Revolution through the Scientific Management movement and its recent offshoots. Industrial medicine and industrial psychology are presented as elements of the "scientification" of surveillance. Drug testing and other contemporary surveillance technologies are placed in this context, and their cultural, political-economic, and moral underpinnings are examined. The dilemma posed by the need to address the real problem of drug abuse in the context of a social control paradigm is explored.