Demonstrators at the gates of the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) against the shortage of HIV drugs, in Mexico City, on February 28, 2020.Teresa de Miguel / El País
A man has denounced the Mexican airline Volaris for discrimination, stating that the company denied him a contract because he was HIV positive.
Armando Uri, 31, applied for a position as flight attendant on June 7, 2017, for which he underwent the tests required by the company, including blood tests, without being explained, he says, that these would be submitted to HIV tests.
Two weeks later, Volaris sent him an email terminating the process.
The company denies the complaint and states in a statement that the hiring was not due to "professional technical aspects of the job and the position to which it aspired."
Uri explains that he was suspicious of the hiring of nine other people who, along with him, had applied for positions within Volaris.
“The only one they don't hire is me.
I wondered why not, when I am a person who graduated with honors, all the information they received was good, I had the level of English they asked for.
I felt excluded and discriminated against.
I fell into a very ugly depression, sometimes I ate, I did not bathe, it was very bad for me.
I didn't want to realize that there was a world outside ”, he tells EL PAÍS.
The man came in search of support for the organization Your voice is my voice, which watches over the defense of human rights, where he explained his case to the activists, who recommended that he file a complaint with the Council to Prevent and Eliminate Discrimination in the City of Mexico (Copred), which admitted it and opened an investigation.
The organization asked Volaris to present the requirements they demand when hiring personnel and that is how Armando learned that his blood tests were sent to a laboratory contracted to do tests for HIV, syphilis and pregnancy.
"Those tests were done secretly," he says.
“There was a two-by-two room [in the Volaris offices] and a doctor was taking blood samples for a test that he said was for triglycerides.
They never gave me anything to sign, "he adds.
In October 2019, the Copred issued a resolution in which it determined that there was discrimination on the part of the company.
The airline disagreed.
“We issued the resolution and the company was dissatisfied.
Now it is up to an administrative court to decide the case, ”Alfonso García, Copred's Coordinator of Attention and Education, explains in a telephone interview.
"We continue to participate as we have to defend our position," adds the official.
“We do not impose penalties or fines.
Our resolutions can be used in other spaces, such as [lawsuits for] moral damage, since they give force, they can have greater results, for example, in a trial.
It can be a sensitive blow, ”says García.
Armando Uri filed a civil lawsuit against Volaris in June 2019. On December 9, a conciliation hearing was held, he says, attended by a representative of Volaris, but no agreement was reached.
“They are not in a position to negotiate anything.
They summoned us to talk so as not to go to trial and to make the procedure shorter.
I didn't want to face a long, tedious process, ”he says.
A Volaris spokeswoman has told EL PAÍS that the company will not comment on this case because the judicial process is still ongoing and referred to a statement issued in January, in which the company rejects Armando Uri's complaint and affirms that “the The reasons why his hiring was not specified lie in others that are very different from those he assures, mainly related to professional technical aspects of the job and the position to which he aspired ”.
The spokeswoman has stated, however, that Volaris has stopped doing blood tests in its hiring processes.
"In Mexico you cannot take blood tests without consent," says García, from Copred.
“In addition, it must be established what these analyzes will be used for.
In Mexico, living with HIV cannot be a prohibition against accessing a job, ”explains the official.
García admits that HIV discrimination is among the first 10 reasons for discrimination indicated by the inhabitants of the city.
"There is no other health condition that is as common in our cases as HIV," he says.
Complaints for this type of discrimination occur mainly in access to work, permits for people with this health condition to attend their medical appointments to access treatment, and cases of dismissal for having received a positive diagnosis.
However, García explains, in 10 years of Copred's work there has been a change in attitude on the part of the population and companies about discrimination in the country's capital.
“We can say that we are beginning to see a drop in discrimination at the local level, an important change in attitude in large companies.
There is awareness that discrimination is prohibited and costly, that it causes you to lose customers, human resources and money, so you cannot allow yourself to discriminate, ”Garcia warns.
Waiting for his case to progress in court, Armando Uri says he has made it public because he hopes that a similar situation will not be repeated.
“This cannot continue to happen, because we are all human beings and we have rights,” says the man on the phone, taking a break from his work as a courier.
"HIV does not stop you, it is not a limitation, today we have scientifically advanced to have a healthy, completely normal life," he says.
And he adds: "We all have dreams, plans and we deserve to carry them out."
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