Sickness Work

This report aims to identify the knowledge gaps and begin to narrow them by reviewing evidence on the main challenges and barriers to better integrating people with mental illness in the world of work.

This is the story of a professor of Medical Sociology, diagnosed with colon cancer. He undergoes the appropriate medical treatment. Passing through that trajectory, he realizes that things happen that he never read about in the professional literature. During his illness and rehabilitation he scribbles down notes about what is happening to him, what he is observing and what things do not tally with his knowledge of the sociological literature. This continuous connection of personal experience with academic literature is what makes this book such a powerful account of the ‘everyday’ life of a sick person. Recommended to teachers and students in the field of social health research; to everyone who works in health care, professionals as well as volunteers; and to men and women who themselves are experiencing a serious illness.

This third report in the OECD series Sickness, Disability and Work looks specifically at the cases of Denmark, Finland, Ireland and the Netherlands, and highlights the roles of institutions and policies.

Too many workers leave the labour market permanently due to health problems, and yet too many people with a disabling condition are denied the opportunity to work. This report explores possible factors behind this paradox.

Too many workers leave the labour market permanently due to health problems or disability, and too few people with reduced work capacity manage to remain in employment. This is a social and economic tragedy common to virtually all OECD countries. It ...

Sickness and disability is a key economic policy concern for many OECD countries. Medical conditions, or problems labelled as such by societies and policy systems, are proving an increasing obstacle to raising labour force participation and keeping ...

The idea that European welfare states are struggling to meet new social risks during a process of adaptation to a post-industrial setting has been an acknowledged theory in welfare state research for some time. The authors of this remarkable book have chosen to study a powerful indicator of how this trend might affect legal protection and access to justice for individuals: reforms in social security systems as they apply to cases of reduced earnings capacity. While previously the notion of social protection made welfare state inhabitants feel that the risk of loss of income due to physical or psychological hindrances was minimal, this sense of security can no longer be taken for granted. This book presents in-depth analyses, by nine leading scholars in social security law, of recent reforms in the field of incapacity benefits in four European countries: Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Sweden. The authors emphasize how recent reforms in the field of social security have been transformed into legal provisions, how the gate-keeping function is implemented in the legislation of the different countries, and to what extent the reforms have affected the legal position of the individuals concerned. They find that ever-tightening requirements designed to reduce benefit dependency, in combination with policies emphasizing individual responsibilities rather than individual rights, cause increased social risks for exposed groups. Among the specific aspects covered are the following: Measuring the reduction of earnings capacity; rights and obligations attached to reintegration into the labour market; work capability assessment procedures; "rehabilitation chains" with fixed time limits; the real and increased risk of poverty faced by long-term incapacitated persons; constitutional concerns raised by increased dependency on means-tested benefits; conditionality of benefits on work-related activities, participation in training programmes, or active job searching; and sanctions that can be applied if the claimant fails to comply with activation measures. All the country chapters provide thorough surveys of recent reforms, as well as analyses of their different weaknesses and strengths. The European dimension is explored with particular reference to anti-discrimination legislation, health and safety law as well as the Open Method of Coordination. As a systematic analysis of the current reforms relating to reduced earnings capacity, this book will attract a wide readership among lawyers and policymakers for its thorough coverage of the current landscape and the far-reaching implications it suggests. The book's systematic comparative method sheds a bright light on the challenges faced by post-industrial European welfare states, and its crystallization of the legal strategies behind the individual legal measures and reforms deepens our understanding of the institutions of social security and our awareness of the rights and obligations of exposed individuals.

First published in 1999, this aims to shift the balance from current concerns about individual behaviour and its health effects to an understanding of the social factors that shape both circumstances and behaviour conducive to health. Its focus is the fact that organized work in paid employment is the common experience of most adults before their sixties, and that individuals have widely varied employment security, working conditions and job control that are likely to affect health (for good and ill) beyond working age itself. It brings together usually disparate work in the sociologies of health and illness and the body; and the sociologies of work and organizations. Importantly, the book is research-based. The argument is supported with primary data that the author has collected in varied workplaces in Britain - a pottery manufacturer, a food-processing firm and the NHS among them and analysis of official statistics and large data sets, as well as secondary literature which is international in scope. The audience includes first and higher degree students in sociology, health and environmental sciences and management studies.