Railroad Ends Genetic Testing of Its Workers

In the face of an unprecedented government challenge, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. announced Monday that it has stopped a year-old program of genetic testing on workers who claim they developed carpal tunnel syndrome on the job.

Officials with the nation’s second-largest railroad made the decision to stop the company’s foray into genetic testing in the wake of a lawsuit filed Friday by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of six workers.

Over the weekend, company officials decided to halt the tests. They underscored their about-face on Monday by agreeing to a 60-day court order suspending the testing and binding the company to discuss a resolution with the EEOC.

“Even though the order says ‘suspend,’ we don’t intend to reinstitute this,” said Richard Russack, a spokesman for the Fort Worth-based railroad, which employs 40,000 people and operates a 33,500-mile rail network in 28 states and Canada.

The railroad had faced a hearing Wednesday on the agency’s request for an immediate halt to the tests, which it says violate the federal Americans With Disabilities Act.

“The testing was being performed without the knowledge of the employees, without their consent,” said Ida L. Castro, EEOC chairwoman. “It’s a test that’s really irrelevant to the job. There was no business necessity. There are other kinds of tests that could determine whether or not a person had carpal tunnel.”

Railroad officials initiated the genetic testing program in March based upon the advice of the company’s medical staff, Russack said. The tests were meant to identify what some think is a genetic predisposition to the hand and wrist ailment.

“They wanted to make certain that people who filed such claims, that if they really had work-related injuries, that’s fine. But if there was a genetic predisposition, they wanted to know that,” he said.

At the time, Russack said, railroad officials did not realize the recommendation would put them on the workplace frontier.

Later, he said, “we realized that we’re on the cutting edge. But . . . I don’t think anyone really said, ‘Let’s get out on the cutting edge of this thing.’ ”

The EEOC only recently issued its first set of guidelines for genetic testing in the workplace. The guidelines apply to federal government agencies but were circulated as suggestions to private employers.

Jean P. Kamp, an EEOC regional supervising attorney overseeing the railroad case, said she was aware of only one other court case involving work-related genetic testing. In that case, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory agreed in late 1999 to a $2.2-million settlement with thousands of people who had been secretly tested for genetic conditions before employment.

“We really don’t know how prevalent it is, but right now we don’t think it’s very prevalent,” said Vicky Whittemore, associate director of the Genetic Alliance, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy coalition.

In a recent American Management Assn. survey of more than 2,000 businesses, only seven reported using genetic tests for job applicants or employees, according to the journal Science.

The railroad maintenance workers found out about the genetic tests after one worker’s wife, a registered nurse, called a medical office to inquire about a scheduled blood test and learned they wanted seven vials, Castro said. She questioned the request for such a large amount of blood and eventually discovered it would be used for genetic testing.

Last month, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees union wrote a letter protesting the genetic tests, and the workers have filed a lawsuit that is separate from the EEOC action.

The EEOC filed suit, amid its ongoing investigation, because one of the complaining workers had refused to provide blood for the test and faced a disciplinary hearing set for Feb. 27, Kamp said.

“He sure believed he was going to be terminated. That was one reason we moved so quickly on it,” she said.

Under industry safety rules and union agreements, the railroad may require workers to submit to medical evaluations to substantiate job-related injury claims. Since March, about 20 of the 125 workers who filed carpal tunnel syndrome injury claims were sent for the genetic tests, Russack said. None of the tests showed a predisposition to carpal tunnel syndrome, he said.

Several others refused to submit to the genetic test, but none have been disciplined or have left the railroad, Russack said.

EEOC attorney Kamp said the case has tapped into growing worries about how far genetic research will go. “With the human genome project news over the weekend [detailing human genome mapping findings], there’s a general concern the public has and the EEOC has that this kind of information could be misused,” she said.

Whittemore, of the Genetic Alliance, said employers should not discriminate based on genetic information, but voluntary, informed testing might be appropriate in certain situations.

She said she had heard of one company, whose employees work with beryllium, that tests for a genetic defect that makes people more sensitive to the metallic element.

“In that case, they are really looking out for people before hiring,” Whittemore said.