TLC Pet Care Centers, a franchise operation of pet care clinics with boarding, h
ID: 452396 • Letter: T
Question
TLC Pet Care Centers, a franchise operation of pet care clinics with boarding, has 56 full-time and 28 part-time employees at 13 locations. Employees include licensed veterinarians, veterinary assistants, animal groomers and front desk help. Many of the part-time employees are high school and college students who help with animals being boarded, by walking dogs, cleaning cages and helping with check-in and check-out. The management of TLC Pet Care Centers wants to establish uniform standards for these part-timers. To ensure that applicants have a real interest in working with animals, a "veterinary aptitude test" is being proposed, which would require applicants to identify various cat and dog breeds from a picture chart and name body parts of dogs and cats with proper veterinary terms. Another proposal is that each high school or college student who applies show a grade of "B" or higher in high school or college biology. Management also wants to insist that part-timers show they've resided at the same address for at least 6 months, as of way of avoiding hiring "transient" student labor. Management also wants all applicants (full and part-time) to pass a "psychological screening" test to insure they do not have violent tempers or anger control problems that would create a risk of an animal being abused. Management is looking for a test to use for this. In the event an employee is ever suspected of abusing an animal, TLC's current policy is that the employee will be required to submit to a polygraph test (lie detector test) regarding the alleged incident. Every employee must pass a drug screening test prior to being employed, in order to insure a drug-free workplace. This fact is prominently stated on the top of TLC's employment application form. In addition, the employee handbook at TLC states that any employee reporting for work whose conduct causes the manager on duty to suspect drug use (including alcohol intoxication) is grounds for that employee to submit to blood or urine testing. Refusal under that circumstance is grounds for termination. Are these policies at TLC Pet Care Centers in compliance with the law? If not, why not?
Explanation / Answer
Some of these policies are in compliance with the law and others are not:
The veterinary aptitude test can help to identify which applicants might be a good fit for the organization but it cannot be a valid reason to not hire someone because most students are the part time workers because they will study something different from veterinarian, they are just looking for some extra money.
TLC can’t ask for grades or that they students have lived on the same house for at least 6 months because it is not related to work how well they are doing at school or why they are moving or not from their house.
The psychological screening seems important due to kind of job, TLC can’t have employees abusing the animals and the polygraph is an standard procedure on most companies in the world, but the company cannot force a person to take the test it is against the law, the common situation is that if people don’t want to take the test they will quit because they know they did something wrong.
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