30 Major Firms, Unions Support AIDS ‘Bill of Rights’ in the Workplace

Thirty major employers and unions have endorsed a new 10-point AIDS “bill of rights” that bars discrimination against afflicted workers and commits its signers to combat employee fears about contracting the disease at work.

The code of principles also rejects mandatory testing of job applicants or employees for antibodies to the virus that is believed to cause acquired immunity deficiency syndrome and stresses the need for strict confidentiality of employee medical records.

“We believe the AIDS Workplace Principles can provide leadership in this complex and emotionally charged arena in much the same manner that the Sullivan Principles offered guidance regarding investment policies in South Africa,” said John E. Zuccotti, co-chair of the Citizens Commission on AIDS, the privately funded group that came up with the guidelines.

The code was endorsed by such major corporations as IBM, American Telephone & Telegraph, ITT, Chemical Bank, Johnson & Johnson, Warner-Lambert, Time, Dow Jones and Times Mirror, publisher of the Los Angeles Times.

New York City also agreed to abide by the principles, as did the Salvation Army, the Rockefeller Bros. Fund, the National Urban League and a pair of teachers unions in the New York area.

Altogether, the endorsers have about 1.5 million employees.

The list of signers will be updated every two months, and organizers said they hope they will have attracted more participants from outside the New York area by the time the next list is released.

“We’ve already had expressions of interest from Iowa and California,” said Carol Levine, executive director of the commission, though she acknowledged that several companies that were approached had refused to participate.

“This is a significant and valuable contribution that will help to remove the stigma attached to AIDS,” predicted Thomas B. Stoddard, executive director of the Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund, a gay-rights group.

“These companies and organizations have shown a very special courage and have set an example for others,” he said.

Ronald Bayer, an medical ethics specialist at the Hudson Institute, said the guidelines were likely to have an impact far beyond the workplace. “Basically, the workplace serves as the school for adults,” he said.

“If people can be taught to deal with this epidemic in a reasonable and thoughtful manner, they’ll have a different perspective when confronted with the question of AIDS in their neighborhoods or their children’s schools,” Bayer added.

The need to better educate people on the causes of AIDS was underscored by the results of a nationwide telephone poll of workers earlier this month by the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Center for Work Performance Problems.

Despite repeated assurances from the U.S. surgeon general and other medical authorities that AIDS cannot be transmitted through casual contact, 40% of those polled said they would think twice about eating in the same cafeteria as a person with AIDS, and 37% said they would not share tools or equipment with such a person.

David Herold, who conducted the Georgia Tech survey, said he welcomed guidelines but added, skeptically: “Let’s see how they follow through.”

He noted that “education is a nice term, like motherhood and apple pie. But it is often easier said than done.”

Union members, for example, “may not believe anyone who is categorized as management,” he said, citing a case in which panicked workers at a utility firm in the Southeast refused to accept the corporate medical director’s assurances that it was safe to work with a person who had AIDS.

Promulgators of the principles agreed that support from labor unions is vital.

One of guidelines states: “The highest levels of management and union leadership should unequivocally endorse non-discriminatory employment policies and educational programs about AIDS.”

The signers rejected mandatory testing for antibodies to HIV, the suspected AIDS virus, for two reasons: first, because “knowledge of an employee’s antibody status has no relation to workplace safety,” and second, because “the use of HIV testing to avoid increased health benefits cost is discriminatory.”

The commission acknowledged, however, that “there may be a few, highly specialized occupational settings where screening is warranted.”

Most of the signers contacted Thursday said their endorsement of the principles simply codified their existing policies on AIDS and other life-threatening illnesses.

IBM, for example, sent a letter to its 389,000 employees last November that read, in part: “IBMers affected by AIDS will be encouraged to work as long as they are able, and their privacy will be respected.” The mailing included an eight-page informational brochure from the U.S. Public Health Service.