Genetic testing after recruitment

Abstract

Once the employment relationship between the employer and the worker has been established, medical examinations must be carried out in order to ensure that the health of the worker is monitored, as provided for in art. 14 LPRL. At this point, the need for consent by the worker concerned to be able to carry out any medical examination that may affect fundamental rights such as the right to decide, privacy or data protection takes on particular importance. The requirement that the worker must consent to be present and to pass a test which may affect, inter alia, fundamental rights to privacy, should be made unequivocally, since it involves direct intervention in the strictly personal sphere and any hint of interference in that private sphere must be guaranteed.

At the same time as creating the rule, art. 22 LPRL provides for a number of exceptions: the first one makes it compulsory in cases where the performance of examinations is essential to assess the effects of working conditions on workers; the second is to ascertain whether the worker’s state of health may constitute a danger to himself, other workers or other persons connected with the undertaking; and the third is to be established in the legal provisions. Exceptions must be interpreted restrictively and even more need to be specified by the legislator in order to prevent the general rule, the voluntary rule, from becoming an exception.