Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2008. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - August 31, 2008
Kim Hawkey
Three years after being fired, the 30-year-old has taken the airline to court in a bid to get reinstated in the job she trained for as well as for back pay.
Although the airline maintains that no employee is fired for being HIV-positive, the woman, in papers before the Johannesburg Labour Court, details how she lost her job three months after being diagnosed.
Employment procedure required the medical tests to be sub- mitted to an independent panel comprising military and private aviation experts. This panel then issues a medical certificate declaring the employee fit to fly.
However, the woman never got this clearance certificate and three months after she was diagnosed, the airline fired her as "she could not obtain the legally required medical certificate".
SAA has defended its decision to fire her, saying it was simply applying a legal regulation that staff had to be "medically fit".
"SAA operates in a strictly regulated environment and we are bound by the legal safety requirements of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA)," said SAA acting group corporate affairs head Sarah Uys.
" Any crew member who is not fit for flying and ill, whether it is bronchitis or any other illness, will be grounded until such time that they have been given a medical certificate ," Uys said.
The woman said she had passed all the qualifying theoretical and practical tests required by SAA and had even learned to swim for the job.
When she discovered she was HIV-positive, she did not believe her job was in jeopardy. Both her HIV and an autoimmune disease she contracted were under control, she claimed in court papers.
Furthermore, SAA had punted an HIV-management programme for its staff to the trainees and she had been told that HIV was not a bar to the job.
However, 10 days after she was diagnosed, the medical panel found her temporarily unfit. Less than three months later, SAA fired her after the panel refused to give her a medical certificate.
"I was doing everything they asked me to. It was such an ordeal. I felt so humiliated. To be HIV-positive does not mean you are incompetent," said the woman, who also supports her parents and five sisters.
Her lawyer, Reynaud Daniels, said SAA was passing the buck to the CAA, which is also defending the action.
"It is a bit of a cop-out. If the CAA regulations are unlawful, SAA as an employer must take responsibility for it. SAA is responsible to the employee," Daniels said.
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