By entering into the location you consent to search of your person, vehicle, and effects, at the operator or drilling companies' discretion.
While seldom used on the locations I have been on, the policy exists, and refusal to submit to searches is cause for termination of employment or being banned from that drillling contractor's rigsites.
Their policy trumps my concealed weapons permit. Their rig and jobsite.
Like it or not, that is what anti-liability/pro-safety measures have come to.
That said, in most states, an unloaded firearm, secured in a locked area, of the vehicle, especially the trunk, is legal to posess (in the absence of other disqualifying considerations) even without a concealed weapons permit. The firearm is considered 'secured'.
Field stripped, stored in separate boxes, you have "parts", not a firearm. That may be an out. Stop at the gate and put your piece back together for the drive home.
Good and logical answer. Wish it had come earlier.
My problem with this are two-fold:
1) Discrimination against a class of people.
2) Unwarranted search of a privately owned vehicle (or did they dismiss these employees simply on hearsay?).
What you point out is that a weapon is not a weapon if it is unloaded or disassembled. It's an inanimate object (or several objects).
If the employer makes this policy clear at the time of employment, the employee has no recourse. But it sounds to me as if the policy is an emotional overreaction to the minimal danger this situation provides.
I work for Time Warner Cable and they have strong policies against smoking - yet they allow smokers to bring their cigarettes on the premesis and even to finger their precious nicotine habit inside the workplace so long as they don't actually smoke them inside the building. Imagine if they told employees they could no longer bring cigarettes onto the property, even if safely locked away in the glove compartment of an employee's car, for fear of what second-hand smoke might do to young children and the inherrent liability of the employer if a cigarette started a fire on the property, etc.
Do you think these judges would support Time Warner firing a person for holding a cigarette in the parking lot or do you think the judges would just tell Time Warner that their policy is nuts and allow smoking to continue with certain restrictions?
It's the inconsistency that bothers me which is why I see this as class discrimination. They are singling out a group of people for termination based solely on what inanimate object they have chosen to lock in their car.
BTW, your oilfield example probably restricts smoking due to the catastrophic effects that an oilfield fire could have. Am I right? Do they restrict cigarettes as much as they restrict firearms?