Living with AIDS on the Job

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The deadly swath being cut by acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS, is fast becoming a quandary for U.S. corporate management as well as a challenge for the U.S. health system. As the disease continues to spread, the emergence of the AIDS victim in the workplace poses one of the country's most difficult tests of employer compassion and good judgment -- and increasingly, of legal acumen. Many managers have reacted by firing AIDS sufferers outright or banning the employee from work on permanent sick leave. But now, at least partly because a thicket of lawsuits has sprung up around cases of the malady, a growing number of U.S. companies and Government agencies are trying to greet the AIDS sufferer with greater understanding and acceptance.

The problems that AIDS poses for the business community are already substantial, and growing. Some 23,700 Americans have contracted the disease, and an estimated 20% to 30% of the 1.5 million U.S. citizens who have so far been exposed to the AIDS virus are expected to join them. Even though AIDS is spread almost always through intimate sexual relations or the sharing of hypodermic needles, many workers have strong objections to working in close quarters with carriers of the disease. Says Dana Ferrell, a director of the South Florida Health Action Coalition: "There's still a tremendous amount of ignorance out there." The dilemma, says Kenneth Labowitz, a Washington lawyer who represents many stricken employees, is that "a person who has AIDS has the worst medical stigma of the decade. One anchor in the crisis is family, and the other is his job. The victim needs support from both."

Already there have been many cases where managers have felt compelled to remove AIDS sufferers from jobs because other employees have demanded it. When Paul Cronan, a twelve-year veteran phone installer for New England Telephone, revealed his illness in May 1985, co-workers refused to use the truck he had driven, demanded that the bathroom he used be disinfected and threatened to kill Cronan if he returned to work. The company put Cronan on disability leave. Todd Shuttleworth, a former budget analyst for Broward County, Fla., came down with AIDS in 1984. The county dismissed him and canceled his medical benefits immediately after Shuttleworth revealed his illness. Says Paul Swinney, who lost his federal prison-guard job in California after contracting AIDS: "They simply want to get rid of you."

Increasingly, it may not be that easy. Swinney, Cronan and Shuttleworth are all suing their employers for damages as high as $15 million. Earlier this month, the U.S. Government for the first time filed a complaint on behalf of an AIDS victim. The Health and Human Services Department accused the Charlotte (N.C.) Memorial Hospital of violating the civil rights of an AIDS-afflicted registered nurse by firing the man and refusing to offer him any other work. By the time the Government acted, however, the AIDS victim had been dead five months. Indeed, no AIDS victim has yet lived long enough to win a decision from the U.S. court system (though judgments in cases where plaintiffs have died are legally valid).