The New York Times - September 16, 2007
Joseph P. Fried

Ms. Cassis, 45, a Bronx resident, said she became so sick that she had to leave her job as a coordinator of a life skills program for transgender people who have AIDS or are at risk of contracting it. She had brought empathy to the job, not only because she had lived with the human immunodeficiency virus. "I have been a person of transgender experience," she said. "I was born a male and transitioned into a woman."

Unable to work, and living on welfare payments and other government assistance, she became severely depressed. "I isolated myself at home," Ms. Cassis said.

But five months ago, seeking to end her seclusion, she followed a friend's advice and went to Gay Men's Health Crisis, an organization based in Manhattan that provides services and advocates for people with AIDS or H.I.V. The group's name aside, its services are available to people of any sexual orientation or gender, and it says that 30 percent of its clients are heterosexual and 20 percent are women.

Ms. Cassis was quickly attracted to the group's employment assistance program, thinking that it could help her determine whether new medications were making her healthy enough to hold a job. She took a position as an intern provided by the program, working as a receptionist at the Gay Men's Health Crisis headquarters in Manhattan. After several months, she was confident that she "could go back to work, but not in as stressful a job" as her previous one.

Aside from unpaid internships, the employment assistance program offers vocational assessments, a 12-week course in basic office work, classes in résumé writing and interviewing, and job placement and retention help. There are no fees. Ms. Cassis did not need the office work course, but attended a résumé class and used the program's computers for Internet research on marketing work.

She learned of an opening for a marketing and enrollment specialist at a health maintenance organization for people with AIDS or H.I.V. She applied successfully, and began working there on Aug. 27, she said.

Although Gay Men's Health Crisis was founded in 1981, the year AIDS was discovered, it did not add a comprehensive employment assistance program to its services until 2003, said Jeff Rindler, director of its volunteer, work and wellness center. Before that, he said, the group limited itself to forums on topics like the rights and responsibilities of employees with H.I.V. and the effect going to work has on government benefits. (Its other programs include nutritional and legal services, individual counseling and programs to curb H.I.V. transmission.)

A fuller employment aid program became particularly important, Mr. Rindler said, as new medications made it possible for many people with AIDS or H.I.V. to live longer and active lives. The program is called Match, for Moving Ahead Toward Career Horizons.

Program participants are seeking to return to work or are seeking their first jobs, as in the case of many who have histories of drug addiction or have always lived on public assistance, Mr. Rindler said.

He said that during the last 12 months, 554 people received vocational assessments under the program, which helped place 161 of them in jobs that included sales work, truck driving and work in restaurants and hospitals.

Krishna Stone, a spokeswoman for the Gay Men's Health Crisis, said job discrimination against people with AIDS or H.I.V. remained widespread, though underreported.

David Grinberg, a spokesman for the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces federal bans on job discrimination against people with disabilities - including all stages of H.I.V. infection - said, "A lot of employment discrimination goes unreported, but with H.I.V. discrimination, there may be an added stigma for individuals to come forward and file charges."

Mr. Grinberg said that based on anecdotal evidence, officials of his agency believed that the number of complaints of H.I.V.-based discrimination in hiring, firing and treatment on the job was "just part of the picture, and may be the tip of the iceberg."

Ms. Cassis said she did not believe she had ever suffered employment discrimination because of her H.I.V. condition, though she said she experienced discrimination based on her gender change in a job in the funeral business that preceded her social work career.

When she looks back these days, it is to the more recent time when she received her AIDS diagnosis and feared she might not work again. "It was devastating not to be in control of your life," she said.

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