• A person who is HIV-positive does not have a duty to give this information to his or her employer because of their right to privacy.
• If you tell your employer about your HIV status, the employer cannot tell anyone else without your consent. If the employer tells anyone else, this is violating your right to privacy and it is possibly an unfair labour practice.
• A doctor or health care worker who tells an employer about an employee’s HIV status without their consent is acting against the law. This is a violation of the employee’s right to confidentiality.
• An employer cannot demand to know if the cause of an illness is HIV infection
• An employer cannot refuse to employ you because you have HIV
• An employer cannot dismiss you because you have HIV.
• An employer cannot dismiss you because you have HIV, even if other employees refuse to work with you.
• The Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act also protects an HIV-positive person from unfair discrimination in the workplace.

Case Study: South African Security Forces Union and Others v Surgeon General and Others

The AIDS Law Project (now SECTION27) represented the SA Security Forces Union (SASFU) and three individual people with HIV who were denied recruitment or promotion in the SANDF on the basis of their HIV status. The old HIV testingpolicies of the SANDF were used to exclude all people with HIV from recruitment, promotion and foreign deployment.

The court declared that the blanket exclusion practiced by the SANDF was unconstitutional. The case was important because it showed that there is no medical evidence to justify a blanket ban on all people with HIV.