President Bush has evidently signed a bill barring genetic discrimination in the workplace. What does this mean to the masses? Well, in short, it is now going to be illegal for your employer to discriminate, fire, refuse to hire, etc. based on your genetic predisposition to disease. So, if you mother and father were sickly, it will not be held against you any longer. Or so they say. This is one more bill to expand upon the other laws enacted to prevent employers from firing you without taking the time to develop their case against you. Why am I telling you this? Well, I used to work in Human Resource Management. It’s what I did for years before deciding that I’d rather be here, doing this…speaking out and sharing ideas with the good people of our nation.

The good part is this, the passage of this bill also applies to health insurance companies and bans them from making eligibility determinations and adjusting premiums on the basis of your family health history. So, I’m guessing this will mean that they may do away with those lengthy health questionnaires that always make everyone so antsy. But will it work? At this point, what will be an effective way to cap the runaway premiums? They’ve been working toward this end for nearly ten years and finally, this bill has been passed. As someone who used to have to explain the reasons we needed the information, I breathe a sigh of relief for fellow HR managers everywhere. And, at the same time, thank God that I’m not one at the moment.

I just wanted to share this little tidbit with everyone in case you were fretting over it in some way. An interesting development in the HR world. For more information, go to http://www.workforce.com. There’s a pretty good article over there that tells all about the bill.

Until next time…

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