Random drink and drugs tests at the VDL Nedcar plant in Limburg have resulted in a high proportion of positive tests, local broadcaster L1 said on Friday.

Some 300 of the 7,000-strong workforce were tested after being picked out by a sniffer dog. Of them, 150 were found to have traces of alcohol and/or drugs in their systems.

A spokesman for the company said that alcohol and drugs are not used on the work floor and that the tests refer to recreational use away from the factory. ‘It includes someone who had a few beers the night before,’ spokesman Miel Timmers confirmed to website Nu.nl.

The company is as big as a village and that the results may reflect that, Timmers said. ‘If you do this sort of test in a village, you may well get these sorts of results,’ he said. ‘You could say we are a reflection of society at large.’

The company introduced random drugs tests several years ago after claims that drugs were being traded on the shop floor. ‘There are no indications that this is still happening,’ the spokesman said.

Nevertheless, a number of the workers who were tested were ‘clearly under the influence and in no state to work,’ L1 quoted the company as saying. They have been suspended under VDL Nedcar’s zero tolerance policy and will receive help.

VDL Nedcar would not say how many workers had been sent home.

The Dutch privacy watchdog AP declined to comment on the VDL case. But a spokesman for the employers organisation VNO-NCW told broadcaster NOS that new legislation on drugs testing, taking privacy into account, is necessary.

‘Employers are responsible for safety on the shop floor,’ the spokesman said.