Workers' Rights - People Living with HIV/AIDS

"Violations of the labour rights of people living with HIV, the AIDS virus, and the stiffening of eligibility requirements for social security coverage in Brazil make the conditions faced by HIV-positive people, especially women, even more difficult."

This article explores the nature of those violations, which are "the most frequent cause of complaints received by the Health Ministry's Coordinator of Sexually Transmitted Diseases and AIDS (CETSS)". Legal protections for workers with AIDS are in place, but often fail to be enforced, according to sources quoted in the article. Other employers side-step the spirit of the law by keeping HIV-positive workers on "permanent leave", paying them but barring them from contact with their co-workers, in response to fears of contagion in the workplace. Such approaches harm the self-esteem of these workers, according to some.

"To defend human rights and promote prevention efforts, the CETSS is developing partnerships with non-governmental organisations and networks of HIV-positive people, as well as the Bar Association, Labour Ministry and International Labour Organisation."

"AIDS widows", the article points out, are particularly vulnerable. According to one activist cited in the article, many of these women are poor domestics who are unorganised and thus unable to defend their rights. These widows, the activist says "are the victims of discrimination when they are most in need of income". Those who are HIV-negative are assumed to have the infection and, thus, are stigmatised. Activists claim that instances of HIV-positive women being fired are very common among domestics.

Nonetheless, very few complaints are filed by domestics who feel that they were unjustly dismissed. According to Beatriz Pacheco, a lawyer and activist with a group of HIV-positive women who promote prevenion of the disease (the Positive Citizens Network), the dearth of complaints may reflect domestics' lack of awareness of - and, by extension, a failure to fight for - their rights. However, according to the article, "another explanation, she said, may be the prejudice among the workers themselves towards people with HIV/AIDS, and their fear of social stigma, since there is a completely different attitude, forexample, towards repetitive strain injuries, in connection with which many complaints are filed with the union."

Even if HIV-positive domestic workers mobilised to fight for their labour and social security rights, they are stymied in terms of their health-related rights. Antiretroviral drugs that delay the onset of full-blown AIDS are provided free of charge to many HIV-positive people in Brazil, but these drugs "were created for men, and do not address the specific problems of women," in whom they may trigger serious side effects.

Click here for the full text of the article online.