My father’s war, my toxic inheritance

[lunatica]

12. I work with someone who has traces of Agent Orange in her system

She's in her late 30s. She has a compromised immune system and it plays havoc with her health. Her father is a Vietnam veteran so there's the connection. She has all the necessary medical paperwork in her file at work so they can't fire her for being absent so often. When she gets sick she usually ends up in the hospital because even the flu becomes life-threatening in a day or two.

Even though Management can't fire her because of her medical condition, they never stop trying to find something to fire her over. So she always has that two pronged battle in her life. Her health and fighting for her job because of her health.

She does fight it though and so far has won every battle. We belong to a the Teamsters Union and they have managed to fight for her up to now.

Which brings to mind that our union and the University of California are in contract talks now. So far one of the issues brought up by UC is that they want to be able to fire anyone who is out sick with the same thing too often. This is a very poorly disguised attempt or just a blatant effort to get rid of medically handicapped people and the union made UC take it off the table.