General Motors is having a hard time hiring new employees due to its anti-weed policies

One of America’s largest automakers could finally abandon its decade-old policy of testing potential employees for cannabis in order to help them find new employees.

General Motors (GM) is currently struggling to recruit 675 temporary workers to fill shifts at two of its assembly plants in Flint and Fort Wayne, Michigan. To help the company attract more potential employees, the United Auto Workers (UAW) union has proposed two simple solutions – increase hourly wages and stop testing potential employees for cannabis.

UAW executives from these two plants have found that many applicants interested in these positions left interviews after discovering that the company was testing for weed. Every adult in Michigan currently has the legal right to use cannabis for recreational or medicinal purposes, and a growing number of young workers are unwilling to give up that right for low-paid temporary work.

GM is currently testing all potential hires on weed with hair follicle tests. These tests can determine whether or not a person has used cannabis in the past few weeks, but cannot determine if they were stoned at the time of the test. Because of this, these tests are not an accurate indicator of whether or not an employee is actually using cannabis while at work. And even if a potential employee stays away from weeds, the use of federally approved CBD products can trigger a false positive result in a drug test.

However, weed isn’t the only problem keeping people from applying to GM. The job pays just $ 16.67 an hour – less than the $ 20 hourly wage a local Pizza Hut delivery driver makes. And new employees are only hired on a temporary basis, with no guarantee that they will eventually be offered full-time employment.

Union leaders are also urging GM to consider increasing the starting salary to at least $ 18 in an effort to attract more potential employees and stop cannabis screening. The company has yet to make a final decision on these proposals, but is reportedly discussing the matter with UAW officials.

As more states legalize adult and medicinal cannabis use, more and more companies are choosing to end unnecessary cannabis testing before discontinuation. In particular, the online retail monolith Amazon, the country’s second largest employer, has just announced that it will stop screening cannabis drugs for its employees.

Several individual states and cities, including New York, Maine, Nevada, Washington DC, and Philadelphia, have also banned companies from testing most employees on weed. However, federal employees are not so lucky. Every federal agency, including the Veterans Affairs Department, NASA, and every branch of the armed forces, prohibits employees from using cannabis products, even CBD. The Biden government also recently laid off several employees for even admitting previous cannabis use.