One more thing my husband wanted me to add - and something that might have a LOT more to do with your inability to find qualified applicants than any drug-testing...
There really is a small community of qualified machinists (I’m not talking about assembly line workers, though and it seems two of you are). Once your company has a bad reputation in an area you will find it extremely hard to find those workers. Even if you up your pay, benefits, etc... if you’ve got (for instance) a manager that’s hard to work with, or someone who hasn’t the first clue about actual machining, but tries to tell the machinist how they should make a part and will not listen to the machinist when they tell them why it will not work to do one operation before another (for example), then even if the person is starving they will not go to work for you as it’s not worth the stress, and they will simply go elsewhere and not even bother applying.
We saw this happen first-hand with a company where we live. And, even if they were to fire the manager that got them the bad reputation it’s going to be VERY hard for them to get anyone in the door. Word of mouth in the industry travels quickly. I’m honestly expecting for the company I’m speaking of to be completely out of business within the next two years or so. They simply don’t have enough qualified workers left that are willing to put up with the one manager - and they refuse to fire him because he’s their friend from childhood. They’ve lost CUSTOMERS due to this person as well, and they still refuse to believe that he’s the problem. DH has seen guys lured in with promises of a huge raise, and two to three weeks later they are back at their old job simply because it is insane at the other company in regard to stress.
Don’t always assume it is the workers who are the ones causing the problems - sometimes people hire supervisors and managers who haven’t a clue, and think that with some business degree they can walk into a shop and do a good job.
Sometimes the attitude of upper management and supervisors can have a lot to do with the attitude of your workers, and the quality of work they do for you. The way it sounds like some of you view these people is kind of disturbing, honestly. [And, I’ve been in management - albeit in retail - so it’s not like I hate all management or anything of the sort. I know it’s not easy at times, at all - especially with this younger generation who really are a lot lazier than mine (Gen X), or especially in comparison to the one before me.]
>>Don’t always assume it is the workers who are the ones causing the problems - sometimes people hire supervisors and managers who haven’t a clue, and think that with some business degree they can walk into a shop and do a good job.
Sometimes the attitude of upper management and supervisors can have a lot to do with the attitude of your workers, and the quality of work they do for you. The way it sounds like some of you view these people is kind of disturbing, honestly.<<
I agree 100%, and we’ve got our share of those issues too.