Are Pre-Employment Medical Examinations Trampling the Rights of Job Seekers?

Employment legislation generally prohibits discrimination against employees (potential and current) on the basis of gender, sex, creed etc. Various UN and ILO conventions maintain that pre-employment medical examinations can only be justified in the context of strict job related demands and for the management of health and safety at work. 

In the case of HIV AIDS and genetic testing which come with many social, ethical and legal concerns, employment legislation is even stricter and often times proscribed. In all cases adherence to the principles of relevance, proportionality, necessity and human rights principles such as privacy, physical integrity and non-discrimination are mandatory.  In any case, HIV AIDS testing must always be done if at all with the prior informed consent of the person taking the test. For instance the UNAIDS/WHO Policy on HIV Testing (June 2004) insists on the 3Cs: informed consent, confidentiality, accompanied counselling.  The Ghana National Work Place HIV/AIDS Policy document (December 2004) requires that standard pre-employment medical forms do not request HIV status.

However with high unemployment rates and the particular vulnerabilities in the informal economy can job seekers insist on their legitimate right to non-disclosure?

Here’s what happened in the case of a domestic worker in Ghana early this year.

The agency with which the applicant was registered found a prospective employer and the applicant was called in for an interview. She was a woman in her mid forties with admirable experience, education and personal presentation. The interview went well but she was required to undergo a pre-employment medical examination to determine if she was fit for the job. She received no details of the medical screening she was to be subjected to but the agency and prospective employer arranged a series of tests at a health facility.

The applicant presented herself at the health facility where sample blood and urine were taken, questions asked and medical instruments applied in various procedures on her. After waiting sometime the applicant was ushered into a consulting room where she was informed by a doctor that she is a healthy woman by all indications except that she tested positive for HIV AIDS.

A Teacher’s Concern

Mr. Yorke is a 7^th grade science teacher in a private school in Ghana. He holds an MSc in Physics. Recently in conversation with Mr. Yorke I asked what his greatest concern is in his work. His response surprised me.  

The issue of primary concern to Mr. Yorke relates to the attitude of kids to learning (in his school). Emphasis is mine. To his mind the one objective he would wish to realise is to get the kids to appreciate that their learning experience is ultimately for their own benefit and not that of teachers or parents. Mr. Yorke feels that kids in school today tend to act as if being in school is really to please parents and teachers; so homework is done to make teachers especially happy and so is picking up a book to study. Left to the kids, they would be playing with their various electronic gadgets and chatting about movies and music. Teachers who think otherwise are therefore labelled as “boring” and rather out of tune with the times. (I should say this is hardly surprising. Unfortunately though, Mr. Yorke believes that school authorities and parents alike tend to accommodate and to some extent support the behaviours that have led him to this assertion.

To buttress his point, Mr. Yorke speaks about kids openly threatening to get teachers sanctioned when teachers insist on appropriate behaviours in school. One student is quoted as saying to his teacher at the threat of punishment; “you dare not do this, I will get you fired”. Mr. Yorke also offers the example of a teacher who was made to apologize to a student  who had received some harsh words from the teacher for bad behaviour and a parent who came in to school to “dress down’ a teacher who had seized his child’s mobile phone in school; mobile phones are not allowed in school. In all these cases, the school administrators intervened by apologising to the parents concerned for the teacher’s inappropriate conduct and failed to follow through with disciplinary action on the student involved. In Mr. Yorke’s view, the challenge boils down to the fact that (African, in this case Ghanaian) parents have ceased to raise their kids in the ways of our specific cultural expectations; meaning respect for the elderly and for authority. I think more than that, the premium that majority of our middle class society (whose kids attend schools the like of which Mr. Yorke teaches in) place on formal education is diminishing as the character of middle class society itself is changing but this debate is for another place. 

Teacher motivation is an important issue in Ghana today and is often pointed to as one of the key challenges to quality education. Usually the factors listed as affecting teacher motivation include low salary levels, lack of resources and inadequate school facilities, accommodation problems and the like, in the public system. Though the school in which Mr. Yorke teaches is not a public school, many private schools face similar challenges especially with regards to pay and general conditions of service; in some cases written contracts and agreed conditions of service do not exist.

Mr. Yorke’s particular concern about his work situation is an example of the effect of institutional and societal responses to the challenges of increasing access to information, exposure to and interaction between diverse cultures, increasing awareness of rights of individuals to name some, in our time on teacher motivation. While these responses have focused on exploiting the potential of science, technology and the process of globalization for purposes of advancement, Mr. Yorke’s insight seems to suggest a failure in addressing the potentially destructive implications. The result is sub-standard management and regulation of the education system and not only the likes of Mr. Yorke are the worse for it.

What is your greatest concern in your work or at your work place and if you work in the education sector, do you share Mr. Yorke’s concern?