Genetic Discrimination in the IT Workplace

MisterTut writes "In what could be a troubling trend, one employer- the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway -was found to have secretly run unproven genetic tests on workers suffering Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. The company was trying to prove that they were not culpable for cases of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome from which the employees were suffering. The ethical considerations of such testing, covert and illicit or not, are profound for those of us working in the IT industry."

Comments

Re:This could backfire...

[techno-vampire]

Depending on what's needed to avoid problems, it might be cheaper to do the testing and provide the safer environment for those who need it. The testing is a one-time expense, and any different equipment is a capital expenditure; medical benefits for carpal can last for months, or even years. I have a friend who's been unable to work for over ten years now because she made the mistake of "working through the pain" of carpal, and will never be able to work for the rest of her life. Her last employer will be paying for that as long as she lives. I'm not faulting them, she could have complained about the pain sooner but chose not to. If she has a genetic predisposition and it were known, this would probably have been avoided because they wouldn't have given her the tasks (copying large numbers of pages of various files in a legal firm) that caused this.

I have a "pre-existing condition"

[crovira]

As an older worker, I have a pre-existing condition, multiple sclerosis.

My mobility is affected and I certainly can't dance anymore. (The cane was getting to be a hazard to the others on the dance floor. I know because I danced at a XMas party a couple or jobs ago. :-)

Trouble is that I am probably working on the last job I will ever be able to get. I'm not that old, 50, so what am I supposed to do what that job 'goes away' as all consulting tech jobs that I ever worked on over the past 25 years have done.

I'm too handicapped and I may be too old for retraining, despite the Associate's in Business that I am currently getting (at week's end thank you.)

I am just getting tossed out. Its nothing personal but that's just the way it goes. The software I was working on (a CRM system written in Smalltalk,) has been end-of-lifed.

What am I supposed to do for money? I don't want a free ride but odds are that, if I wouldn't hire someone disabled like me, nobody else will either.

I'm not dead yet, but some days, I sort of get the feeling that everybody else wishes that I was. so they wouldn't have to be bothered.