dmw@UNH.CS.CMU.EDU (07/29/86)
Return-Path: <dmw@unh.cs.cmu.edu> Date: Tuesday, 15 July 1986 16:36:27 EDT From: Hank.Walker@unh.cs.cmu.edu Subject: What is Job-Related? What is a job-related attribute? For example, suppose I as chairman must promote one of two people the be company president. Both have equally good work performance. Their only difference is that person A has had three heart attacks, has high blood pressure, is grossly overweight, smokes like a chimney, and has tested positive for AIDS. Person B is in great health, and is into clean monogomous living. Who would you promote? To me the answer is obvious. One candidate is much more likely to die on the job than the other. Promoting one candidate to president involves an investment in an adjustment period, forming new working relationships with employees and customers, etc. It is likely that the losing candidate will leave the company, so several years will be required to train a new successor. The chairman would be exposing his stockholders to unnecessary risk by chosing person A rather than person B. In fact key employees at all large companies are required to undergo extensive physicals. All manner of bad personal habits that significantly increase the chances that the employee will die or be unable to perform their work duties in the future seem to be job-related attributes to me. A more interesting issue is when instead of personal habits or environment, the cause is genetic. What if person A was 40 and male, and his father had Huntington's disease, so that there was a significant chance he would get it. What if there was a test that verified he would get the disease? Again I as chairman would pass him over. It may seem unfair to person A, but his death while president would be unfair to stockholders. There is a separate issue of how one obtains the information about these personal habits or genes, but once the information is in hand, I think it can be legally used. -------