Later, the case says that it was the companies" practice, to inform a supervisor of any important matters involving reporting employees, including those affecting employee attendance.
The personal privacy issue is way to common in many institutions today. I believe the Privacy Act of 1974 protects individuals on all their personal records to include medical records. Also there is a fine line between who needs to be privy to medical records in a corporate setting. I believe corporate policy must be drawn closely not to violate "physician-patient" privilege. Obviously certain situations may dictate. Paul Cronan could have dealt with issue internally and/or quietly with little to no security issues. If you simply look at all the "lenses" of screening ethics, you will find the consequential or teleological focus would show tremendous impact on all parties involved. Obligation and integrity both are factors as well, but the outcome could have been avoided and saved significant pain and dollars with both parties.
Discrimination toward Paul Cronan was filed legally violating his civil rights solely due to his physical disability. Falling under statues that prohibiting discrimination against the disabled. He said he feared for his safety and by them not addressing the issue they were inadvertently forcing him not to return to work. I interpret that he was forced not to come back to work based on the second half of the company policy stating if the sickness utilizes all the employee's sick days that steps will be taken to terminate their employment. This to me is unethical.
Lastly, the issue of occupational safety or the safety of others is seen here. The company no question, regardless on how they handled this situation wholly, needed to weigh the impact on the safety of the preponderance of the employees. Little did the community know at the time due to the frequency of AIDs in the work place, had minimal to no safety impact on the work force.
