Workplace is frontline in the HIV/AIDS battle

It's time to "revolutionise" the workplace and use the hard-fought constitutional rights to ensure that the impact of HIV/AIDS does not destroy the fabric of South African society.

Addressing the SA AIDS Conference at the International Conference Centre in Durban this week, Alan Whiteside, director of the Health Economics And Research Division (HEARD) at the University of Natal, said there was a "controlled range of legislation, regulations and agreements" pertaining to the workplace that now needed to be used in order "to level the playing fields".

"In the hierarchy of imperatives, the one key factor that drives companies is profit, and AIDS costs money. Which means that those on the shop floor must know what their rights are and use them."

The impact of HIV/AIDS on the workplace, he said, would increasingly cause productivity to go down. It was a factor that companies needed to "robustly" address in terms of social responsibility - for their own survival. "Even on our own doorstep we have had to say to those who fund our projects that they too must become AIDS compliant in terms of our working environment. It must apply at every level."

But it was a difficult balancing game where "foot loose" multinationals at the lower end of the scale might see an evolving "disease catastrophe" as the signal to move off and do business elsewhere.

It was also time to focus on the plight of the 39 percent of South Africans working in the informal sector, in smaller, marginalised businesses, in agriculture, who were among the most vulnerable sectors in the country. "Often these businesses are badly resourced and simply cannot respond adequately to the challenges posed by HIV/AIDS."

In this vein financial insecurity for "the poorest of the poor" families was an issue that would pose increasing problems. To illustrate his point he described one particular family.

"A colleague of mine noticed four children walking in a rural area. The one in front, about eight years old, was dressed; the others were naked. They were all exhausted and starving. He asked them where they were going. They told him that their mother had died that morning and they were looking for a grandfather who they were told maybe worked in the area. They had already walked 20km."

He said it was up to the business community, the NGOs and government to ensure that the "maybe" syndrome was removed from the vocabularies of workers and their families.