AIDS Policy Rare Among Major Firms : Fewer Than 20% Have Programs Despite Potentially Huge Costs
Fewer than 20% of major U.S. corporations questioned in a survey released Tuesday said they have policies to help employees with AIDS, although lower productivity and higher insurance rates linked to the disease could cost companies billions of dollars in the coming years.
About 33% of 151 Fortune 500 companies polled by Strategic Resource Corp. reported cases of acquired immune deficiency syndrome among employees and another 50% anticipate encountering the disease in the workplace some time in the future.
Still, only 40% of the companies surveyed have instituted AIDS information programs for their employees, said Strategic Resources, a subsidiary of the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton Inc.
The effect of the disease is expected to hit the bottom line hard.
The study predicted that health costs will soar, consumer confidence will plummet if buyers suspect products were handled by infected employees, on-the-job protests are likely if employees object to working with infected colleagues and companies could be slapped with lawsuits from investors and consumers as well as their own employees.
Some projections have said it will cost U.S. businesses more than $50 billion over the next five years in decreased productivity resulting from AIDS-related illnesses and deaths.
Twenty-two percent of the companies surveyed said their businesses already have been affected by the AIDS crisis. Insurance firms reported an increase in health insurance claims, and health-care companies said their patient load is up.
While the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta estimates that the AIDS death toll will reach 270,000 by 1991, corporate America “simply hasn’t developed sensible plans to deal with the impact on operations,” said Robert L. Dilenschneider, president and chief executive of Hill & Knowlton.
Relies on Medical Benefits
Of the 20% of the companies surveyed that said they have programs to help AIDS victims, most rely on extended medical benefits and counseling for stricken employees.
But the majority of companies, including American Telephone & Telegraph, have opted to treat AIDS as any other disability by recognizing an employee’s right to work. While AT&T; has conducted AIDS education programs in New York and San Francisco, company spokesman John Geoghegan said the company’s efforts have been “loose.”
“We have many on-going employee programs,” he said, and AIDS seminars were added “because it is an issue in society today.”
San Francisco-based Levi Strauss & Co., on the other hand, instituted aggressive employee programs from noon seminars to AIDS fund-raising events for its employees as far back as 1982, spokeswoman Joyce Bustinduy said. The company said it has lost a number of employees to the disease.
“The company philosophy is that an employee with AIDS is treated like any other with a life-threatening illness--there’s no discrimination on leave time, and we’ll make flexible work arrangements.”
A separate study released Tuesday predicted that the AIDS epidemic could cost the nation’s real estate industry $1 billion this year in lost rents, lower property values and depressed economic activity.
Fear of contracting the disease could make it harder to sell some homes or lease certain business properties in cities with large concentrations of AIDS cases, said the report by the San Francisco accounting firm of Deloitte Haskins & Sells.
The $1-billion projection is based on the fact that real estate accounts for about 10% of a business’s costs and as much as 45% of the GNP, including indirect costs.
