Program to Teach Workers About AIDS

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan on Tuesday announced a federal program that encourages businesses to help educate workers about AIDS.

The program, sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will help major corporations, small businesses and labor unions draft policies and start education programs aimed at preventing the spread of AIDS, protecting the rights of infected workers and eliminating false information about the disease.

“AIDS education and prevention is everyone’s responsibility, and the business community, as a very influential segment of American life, has a major responsibility,” said Sullivan, who addressed a nationwide audience via a satellite hookup from CDC headquarters in Atlanta.

Representatives of such businesses as Levi Strauss & Co., Polaroid and Converse were on hand for the satellite teleconference, parts of which originated in Los Angeles, Washington and Boston. The program was announced on National AIDS Awareness Day.

The program encourages businesses to keep HIV-infected employees working as long as possible to assure that they remain entitled to health insurance and other benefits.

It will help them formulate policies that assure fair hiring and promotion practices and prevent discrimination and harassment of employees with HIV or AIDS, CDC officials said.

The CDC will also help train supervisors to deal with infected employees, educate employees and their families, and encourage community service and volunteerism.

Some of the companies involved began AIDS education projects years ago. San Francisco-based Levi Strauss launched one in 1987, for example, in response to the large number of employees stricken with the disease.

The purpose of the new Business Responds to AIDS program is to persuade businesses to become involved, even if they now have no stricken employees.

Lee Smith, chairman of the National Leadership Coalition on AIDS and former president of Levi Strauss, said enlisting support from business may be difficult because of the stigma associated with the disease.

“I could say things like they should or they must” get involved, he said. “But to say that they will--I’m not sure. There is a compelling argument for them to do so.”