ABSTRACT
The material presented in the foregoing chapters, while pointing to the complex nature of organizational responses to HIV/AIDS also confirms the real prospect of encountering workplace discrimination and prejudice-from employers and/or co-workers —as a result of HIV status (Harris and Haigh, 1990; Wilson, 1993; Wilson, 1994; Green, 1995). While the detriment suffered may be minimised by constructive employer action, for example, in the form of HIV/AIDS policies and education, this remains a choice for organizations since there is no specific British legislation designed to provide protection for these employees in the workplace. That legislation which does exist is primarily concerned with public health matters, three specific HIV/ AIDS related measures being currently in force: the Public Health (Infectious Diseases) Regulations 1985 which make certain sections of the Public Health (Control of Disease Act) 1984 applicable to AIDS; the AIDS Control Act 1987; and the Health and Medicines Act 1988. The AIDS Control Act provides for the collection of statistics relating to HIV and AIDS while the 1988 Act has one Section aimed at preventing the sale of home HIV testing kits and the growth of fee testing establishments. It is, however, the first act that is perhaps the most interesting in that its provisions reflect the wide scale ignorance of HIV transmission at the beginning of the epidemic, and the level of panic which the disease induced. It allows local authorities to order the medical examination of a person with AIDS or who is HIV positive if it is ‘in the interest of the individual, the family or the public generally’ and provides for magistrates to issue a warrant to a police officer to enter premises in connection with the undertaking of such a medical examination. On the order of a magistrate, people with AIDS, but not those who are HIV positive, can be removed to, and
detained in, a hospital if circumstances indicate that the patient will not take proper precautions to prevent the spread of infection. Other sections of these regulations concern the body of someone who has died as a result of AIDS: it not being allowed to keep the corpse in the home before burial or to allow viewing of the body in an open coffin. It can be noted in passing that it was this type of highly regulatory response, framed in medico-legal terminology, that provided the backdrop for the development of many defensive workplace responses (see, chapter 2 above)— especially in the field of health care-and was often reflected in the privileging of the right of management unilaterally to dictate and control the activities of organization members affected by HIV/AIDS.
