[Elena]

Genetic tests are getting more & more popular among employers. The USA has introduced this practice- if you want to work for FBI or the Pentagon, you must be given a DNA test. It's true for business&companies.In this way employers are trying to screen people & save up money for medical insurance.
Less than one year ago in the USA were enforced Federal Laws Prohibiting Job Discrimination (21/10/2009).The same laws are there in 15 EU countries. But not in Russia.It means that any of our companies can require a DNA analysis with your CV. Laboratories (for ex. Invitro)are already providing these services.And the cost of DNA test is 1 000-30 000 rub (it depends on difficulty of the test).Employers can get some information about your health &for ex.your predisposition to alcoholism:)So,after some time, companies can employ only strong & healthy people.& what's next? We'll have a society without a place for the disabled,ill & weak?
What do you think about it? If you are an employer,would you need to make sure you have worked only healthy, not sick, 28-year-old men & women working?

[Gingery]

The law you mentioned is a very good law. I came across it in connection with other events though. This law also restricts the use of a lie detector - Polygraph - by employers, with the exception of army forces, national safety and so on. Whatever the reason can be, whatever the explanation, it's strictly forbidden and considered to be a kind of harassment.

And no wonder we do not have such a law in Russia. And no wonder this way of personnel's treatment is getting more and more popular in Russia.

Thanks God, I resigned from my previous job before our top management had a chance to use it on the staff I was in charge of- otherwise I would just have been sacked for being rude. Because I believe that this practice is awful and shameful and I hope I'd've had enough guts to speak out.

Later I conversed with my former co-workers and was able to assess the impressions they had gotten. To say that it was humiliating is to say nothing. Naturally, even if they wanted, they could not refuse to attend this test. Oh, no, they could! Having got their walking papers.

As for the genetically perfect employees that I have almost forgot - I'm sorry - I can say that the state of such studies is so miserable and unreliable still that hardly allows to predict even a simple heart disease. Besides, the average duration of work for one company in our country isn't enough for any genetically caused disease to become fully developed.
On the other hand, some owners of Russian companies are actually becoming paranoid about the insides of our brains. In their opinion, what can have a bad influence on things right now is our thoughts.
So, personally, I think that a job discimination concerned with genes isn't threatening us as much as a "way of thinking" discrimination.

[onlooker]

Employers may require a DNA analysis, but they don`t know what to do with results.The predisposition to sickness
may remain only predisposition , unrealized to disease.If employers hire staff for stupid routine job they may be
guided by such tests,it will save up money for medical ensurance.But for making a scientifi? breakthrough DNA
tests are useless, only waste of money and time.

The creative potential doesn`t depend on strength of health. By the way genius of itself is an anomaly!

People with poor health are often more hardworking and resourceful. They used to overcome problems (their first
task was to stay alive in spite of State medical care), they used to look for unusual solutions, to believe in success of
impossible ideas.

As regards the unfair play of employers, we know: There is no fairness in the world, only the reasonability! But the world
is still alive

[Pippin]

Gingery said:

The law you mentioned is a very good law.

It's a very idiotic law. Just as nearly everything the State does. Beside, it tries to mend the consequences of previous attempts to regulate the labour market.

Gingery said:

Thanks God, I resigned from my previous job .... Because I believe that this practice is awful and shameful and I hope I'd've had enough guts to speak out.

You see? You don't need the State to protect yourself from your employer. As a result of his own paranoia he lost a valuable worker. I myself resigned from my previous job immediately after they established the system, you know, of these magnetic ID cards that survey your movements through the building. Having a ticking timer when you are going to the toilet was my life ambition.

[Gingery]

Strangely enough but my husband told me the same answering my indignation about the lie detector test applied to my former team.
He said they could have resigned instead of taking part in that spectacle or, if they hadn't wanted to quit this job, wouldn't have allowed the employer to fire them for the refusal, sued him and so on.
That's probably a part of the male identity - I mean your similar opinions:) Let's fight for ourselves all by ourselves!

Nobody argues that a strong person can handle everything including paranoid bosses. And with the fact that such employers punish themselves like the Gogol's petty officer's widow did, losing valuable workforce.
But laws are supposed to protect the weak, those who can't stand up for themselves. It's a primary sense of the "law" concept. The Smith-and-Wesson Model 1 did it first, but now we should look for more effective methods:)

[Pippin]

I am not a strong person when it comes to fighting so I should have agreed with you simply from an egoistic desire of being protected by such a sweet law you just described. (1 missing word) But I can't. I always thought that laws are all about protecting anyone from coercion or fraud. And when I am protected from being thrown out of my house by coercive action of a strong villain, the strong villain himself is protected from me being settled in his house as a dependent. Unfortunately this understanding of law faded away completely. Today law is the complete opposite - it's a system of who can coerce whom. Sure enough it's backed by the whole truckload of a pseudo-moral demagoguery about "protecting the weak ones", or "minority" as they call them there in the West (and here too). But for me one thing is obvious - there is not any positive description of enforceable law (law is the presence of something, a free lunch for example), only negative one (law is the absence of something, namely violence and fraud). I think I have some strong arguments to stand on this ground. 1 missing article; 1 misused

[Gingery]

I'm afraid you lost me:( Is absence of violence such a bad thing just because it's being described with the word which implies a grammatically negative meaning ("absence", not "presence")?

[Pippin]

It is a very complex problem I am trying to deal with. Add to this fact that English isn't my native language - et voil�! A complete misunderstanding.
Here is another attempt:
The bad things happen when somebody declares that he has the right to something "in general". The problem is, there is not anything "in general". When we are talking about goods and services we must remember that we live in the world of scarcity. That means, something we referred to as "general" - job, food, habitation etc - has a finite quantitative dimension. I.e. there is finite number of items in each of such classes. From irrefutable logic it follows that for one item of the same class there can be more than one contender. But a simple declaration of the right to have an item "in general" (which declaration is a law) doesn't resolve the problem of distribution of the particular item(s) amongst the contenders. There are two and only two ways to deal with the issue:
1) let contenders to resolve it by themselves and
2) let someone act as a supreme distributor
3 misused articles; 1 missing

The first case also splits in two, and only two possibilities:
a) Either the contenders will try to resolve their claims by violence or fraud.
I proposed to ban this behavior by the force of law, declaring that everybody "has the right of absence of violence and fraud directed against him".
Or the contenders will try to resolve them by peaceful means: negotiations, competition, even charity (when one or several contenders voluntarily reject their claims on the moral ground).
Since the first (a) possibility is banned by law, only the second one is the way to do.
1 misapplied article; 1 missing object

But, when they declared "Everybody has the right to work", (the presence of something, a job in this case) they don't at all mean "Everybody has the right to get a job by negotiations, competition, or charity". They mean "Everybody has the right to a job regardless of any other consideration, and if somebody doesn't have one he wants, he must be given it". That leads us to the second way - a supreme distributor. This is the problem: any positive call, a call declaring the right to have something in general, rather than the right to not-to-have, has a strong inclination to provide a ground for The Supreme Distributor's coming. Do you need the explanation what this means - The Supreme Distributor?
1 misapplied article;

[Gingery]

I suppose it is a question. And I'd really like to get the explanation of the words "The Supreme Distributor" just because I have no clue what it means and failed to find it in the Wiki.

[Pippin]

Of course you didn't find it in Wiki, I just invented it myself. I thought the idea has a rather clear implication, so the question was a rhetorical one.

The Supreme Distributor is always a person or a group of persons who decide what's better for the rest of the society. Giving him the rights to regulate relations between a bad DNA employee and his employer you must be ready to accept all the consequences - that in some aspects he also knows better what's good for you. For example, what country you must or must not visit. Or an endless number of other issues of your daily life. Do you like it? (It's not a rhetorical question)