Workers' Health Care and the Law

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This research was designed to analyze legal problems regarding workers' sickness and health care in a comprehensive manner and to find a theoretical structure to deal with such problems effectively. A variety of methods were utilized to identify and analyze the issue. First, we conducted field studies not only in Japan but also in France and Germany, visiting facilities of actual enterprises and interviewing specialists in the fields of medicine, occupational health, and labor law. Second, we collected documents and materials, both Japanese and international, on this theme to verify our findings and expand our horizon. Third, taking the advantage of being a joint-research project, we had a great number of meetings to share information and exchange opinions among the participants. As a result of these efforts, we confirmed the necessity of legal approach to the issue of workers' health from the expertise of labor law. It is becoming particularly important, given the mounting pressure upon the workers in today's workplaces, to maintain their mental health. This cannot be achieved without proper regulation of working hours and legal guarantee of leave, and we found many valuable implications in this respect from the research. They will be compiled and published in the near future. We already published a) book on the labor/employment relations of National Universities. Its sections on the employee' health, working hours, and leaves are built on the fruits of this research.