Trade unions make fight against AIDS a priority
- From the workplace, where they intend to stimulate prevention and fight discrimination, to the international arena where they will pressure pharmaceutical multinationals to lower the price of medication and lobby the World Trade Organisation to review its intellectual property agreement, trade unions pledged to join the fight against HIV/AIDS and to make this fight a top priority. On the frontline is the ICFTU’s African Regional Organisation, Afro, which has launched a multifaceted programme of action to combat HIV/Aids and is mobilising unions all over the continent.
- Over 36 million people are currently living with HIV/AIDS, two thirds of them live in Africa. The disease is also fast spreading in other continents, in particular, Eastern and Central Europe. Three million people died of AIDS in 1999.
- Thousands of workers are being victimised at the workplace because they are HIV positive. Unfair dismissals, mandatory pre-employment tests, harassment, lack of confidentiality and denial of promotion or vocational training are among the abuses suffered world-wide by HIV positive workers.
- The ICFTU believes that trade unions are uniquely placed to fight the pandemic as the work place could be a major “entry point” for information, prevention and rights campaigns. Among the measures proposed by unions are prevention and protective clauses in collective agreement and partnership with employers. Unions demand “zero tolerance” for discrimination at the workplace and in society.
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