Pennsylvania senators have introduced a bipartisan federal bill aimed at the economic harms of substance use disorder (SUD), while remaining somewhat ambiguous about which kinds of harms it’s referring to. Senators Dave McCormick (R) and John Fetterman (D) introduced the Workforce Recovery and Resilience Act on August 5. Companion legislation was introduced in the House in April.
The proposal falls under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. It would direct Acting Department of Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling to send state and local governments information on “evidence-based and promising practices” to mitigate economic harms related to SUD, including how to apply for relevant federal funding. And it would broaden eligibility for National Dislocated Worker Grants to include career training in SUD, mental health care and pain management in any jurisdiction “that, as a result of widespread substance use, addiction, and overdoses, has higher-than-average demand for such activities that exceeds the availability of State and local resources to provide.”
The legislation would add a new category of eligibility that’s specific to SUD, and would apply to dislocated workers; people who have been long-term unemployed; people who work or are looking for work as treatment providers for SUD, mental health or pain; and people who are “unemployed or significantly underemployed as a result of widespread substance use in the area.”
McCormick’s office did not respond to Filter’s inquiry.
Drugs and the people who use them have long been scapegoats for economic underinvestment.
“If we’re going to help more people recover, we need enough skilled workers to provide that care,” McCormick stated in his announcement. “This bipartisan bill gives communities more tools to train that workforce so more people can get the help they need.”
Drugs and the people who use them have long been scapegoats for economic underinvestment, and the language used in the Act and by its proponents sort of conjures an image of a small town where the “scourge of addiction” has wiped out all the jobs. Or conceivably it could refer to people who are struggling to find work because first they need to access treatment, but aren’t able to due to overwhelming demand on the few providers in their area. Or to people who are unable to work because they’re surrounded by too much drug use to escape it. But one way or another, a lot of the workforce harms the legislation is concerned with probably don’t come from drug use so much as they come from drug-testing, and the larger drug war.
While it’s certainly true that people have lost jobs because their SUD negatively impacted their performance or their behavior in the workplace, that’s also a stereotype obscuring the larger picture of people losing their jobs due to drug use. Often urinalysis testing is the barrier to remaining at or returning to work, rather than conduct or ability. Research indicates that workplace drug-testing is not an effective means of either reducing drug use or increasing productivity. A larger barrier to employment—and to recovery—is the criminalization of drugs and the unwillingness of many employers to hire candidates with felony records.
The proposal is the latest of many cosponsored by McCormick and Fetterman, who are often touted for their bipartisanship, although Fetterman has also prompted serious conjecture about whether he intended to switch parties and recently had an apparent Freudian slip in which he told NewsNation that he was a Republican. He did not make his own announcement about the legislation, but on August 5 did appear The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart to espouse some right-of-center views on socialism and the existence of genocide in Gaza.
Image via Coon Rapids, Minnesota
