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| Laurent Vogel is a research officer for the Trade Union Technical Bureau for Health and Safety. He is responsible for monitoring the application of EU directives. The TUTB was founded by the European Trade Union Confederation to promote high standards of health and safety in European workplaces. He has published several books including 'Prevention at the Workplace' and 'Risk Assessment at the Workplace: a guide for Union Action'. Here he warns against the coming widespread use of genetic testing by employers and outlines the ETUC's position. |
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We are opposed to any form of genetic selection of workers. This means that genetic screening based on a predictive assessment of an individual's predisposition or susceptibility (lesser or greater resistance to a specific disorder) must be made illegal in employment relations. The ban must be underpinned by effective, deterrent penalties. If there are to be exceptions, they must be statutory, only on the grounds of the worker's or another's health and safety, and kept under review by the regulatory agencies. Genetic monitoring (ascertaining whether genetic material has been damaged by occupational exposure), on the other hand, can be regarded as an admissible form of medical surveillance if it meets the same acceptability criteria as for all forms of workplace health surveillance.
Our objections to genetic screening are mainly to do with consistency of workplace prevention policy and protection of workers' individual fundamental rights. Genetic screening is unlike most other forms of health surveillance because it is chiefly about predicting susceptibility or predisposition. It does not say whether the individual examined is fit to do a particular job in safe and healthy conditions, nor does it detect genetic damage from workplace exposures that would justify taking preventive action. There is enough evidence to show that, in the absence of specific rules, some employers will in practice use predictive medicine methods which no doubt fit in with some 'human resource management' ideas but are at odds with preventive principles (one of the most disgraceful being HIV testing, which has denied many people jobs without the slightest justification in preventive health terms).
The preventive principles enshrined in International Labour Organisation Conventions and Community directives in particular, are based on a strictly-defined hierarchy of the measures to be taken: avoiding risks, evaluating the risks which cannot be avoided, giving priority to collective protective measures to combat or reduce risks at source, etc. This is the general setting in which health surveillance takes place. It has nothing to do with employee selection. The 'statistical facts' of a genetic screening-based assessment of individual susceptibility has nothing to do with the 'individual facts' of a worker's health history. That a particular genetic trait puts someone in a group statistically-defined as presenting an above- or below-'average' risk is no grounds for denying their right to work. This fundamental right not to be discriminated against on the grounds of genetic make-up is also bound up with protection against other possible causes of discrimination, in that genetic traits are rarely evenly-distributed between men and women, different ethnic groups, etc.
Workplace health surveillance is not just a matter of free and informed consent. For one thing, national practices (and Community law) make health surveillance compulsory in various circumstances, where the worker has no say in the choice of examining doctor or the tests performed. For another thing, the reality of employer/employee relations largely robs the worker of their independent power of decision, because their consent or refusal to be tested may determine whether he or she gets or keeps the job. Many Community directives already deal with workplace prevention set-ups. Community rule-making powers are beyond question in this area. Article 137 of the Amsterdam Treaty re-enacts the previous article 118A provisions on it. Genetic screening raises questions of principle which could unpick the workplace prevention system at the seams and which do have a direct impact on fundamental social and employment rights. For that reason, Community legislation is essential to buttress and supplement national legislation in this field.
In the case of an official who refused to undergo a pre-recruitment HIV test, for example, the Court of Justice of the European Communities held that: 'If the person concerned, after being properly informed, withholds his consent to a test which the medical officer considers necessary in order to evaluate his suitability for the post for which he has applied, the institutions cannot be obliged to take the risk of recruiting him' (Judgement X v Commission, 5 October 1994).
Commissioner for education, Viviane Reding, recently launched the eLearning initiative. This is designed to equip schools with multimedia computers, train European teachers in digital technologies, develop European educational services and software and speed up the networking of schools and teachers. Announcing the new initiative, Ms. Reding said that the Commission's objectives would require extra efforts from most Member States but if achieved will enable Europeans to make up much of the ground on the USA. She also suggested that young people should be taught to distinguish between the virtual and the real.
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