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By ROBIN MARSHALLIndustry is making a hard-boiled, no pussy-footing attack on its 10 billion dollar tab for occupational alcoholism.Aside from concerns for personal tragedy, top management and union officials are setting up programs to catch the alcoholic on the job and early, and to get him into treatment. According to the National Council on Alcoholism (NCA), recovery rate ranges between 60 and 80 per cent.The $10 billion dollars in losses from the high cost of absenteeism, sick pay, bad decisions, a figure estimated by the NCA, is far more than the cost of setting up alcoholism programs, arranging comprehensive health insurance plans and even paying for employee hospitalization and treatment.Alcoholism conscious-rais-ing seminars are helping companies across the U.S. become more aware of the part alcoholism plays in their budgets and to accept it as a curable disease.Programs established bymany Connecticut companies, like Pitney Bowes of Norwalk, Scoville Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, the Winchester-Western Division of Olin Corporation of New Haven, the Southern New England Telephone Company, are confronting the alcoholic with the fact of his inadequate job performance. In most cases, his alternative to getting help is losing his job.On the national scene, some 400 major companies have programs, many instituted over the past three years, including United Air Lines (active since 1938), American Air Lines, General Motors, Du Pont, Eastern Kodak Company, R.J. Reynolds, Hughes Aircraft, Honeywell Inc., Weyerhaeuser Company, Kenne-cott Copper, the United California Bank.State specialistsUnder the provisions of the Hughes-Staggers Bill of December 1971, each state has funds to employ two specialists, one to work with state employees and a second to consult with companies desiring to set up a program for dealing with alcoholic employees. In Connecticut Joseph J. Ieradi of the State Department of Mental Health, Alcohol and Drug Dependence Division, is available as consultant for business and industry without charge.Alcoholism sessions, like those conducted last spring for Fairfield County companiesby the Alcoholism Council ofSouthwestern Connecticut, are bringing the alcoholic employee out of the wash roomand companies out of their own denial that the problemexists.Denial is the alcoholic’s merry-go-round. Industry has a powerful wedge, according to experts at the National Council on Alcoholism. A worker may rationalize the loss of his family, his growing isolation, his poor health, but the threat of losing his job can be a strong factor in his acceptance of help. The job provides his security, but, more important, it proves to him that he can still function, that he is not an alcoholic.“From four to 10 per centCosts and savingsA comprehensive attack on alcoholism has brought on some close figuring at companies like the Scoville Manufacturing Company in Waterbury, which conducts a program of detection and treatment for its employees.“The alcohol or drug addict is absent an average of 35 days per year,” estimates Roger P. Rose, Director of Human Relations. “The cost to Scoville per addict per year” at an average hourly rate of $3.25 is $4,550. The alcohol and drug program will process at least 75 employees this year at a cost of $341,250.Of the 75, the program will “completely rehabilitate 78 per cent or 58 employees’* at a cost of $263,900. Its “initial failures’’ will cost $77,350.“At this rate,” concludes Mr. Rose, “the program will produce an annual saving of approximately $186,550.’’Actively supported by top management and union officials, Scoville’s program is an employment benefit entitling participants to accident and sickness insurance. No employee can be fired merely because of alcoholism if he is attempting to recover. And if fired, he will be rehired within a year if he has stopped drinking and has joined the program.Treatment includes hospitalization or a briefer stay at High Watch Farm in Kent, and follow-up counseling.of employees on a payroll are alcoholics,’’ according to Elaine Eskesen, executive director of the Southwestern Connecticut Alcoholism Coun-
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Westport Fairpress
Westport, Connecticut, US
Wed, Aug 15, 1973
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USA 24 Jun 2020
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