업무상 질병 인정기준의 개선방안

Abstract

In this contemporary industrial society, causes for accidents on duty are emerging very much complicated and diverse and in particular, in case of occupational diseases, it is more difficult to prove causal relations between a duty and an onset of disease comparing to the accidents on duty. We have relevant legislations describing guidelines of occupational diseases and yet, those legislations have limits in that they are less likely to deal with disasters caused by new working environments and harmful substances. In this regard, the government has revised the relevant legislations taking all those new circumstances into consideration but such action of the government is believed to increase more controversial discussions because it has instead established legislations of general to define ‘proximate causal relation.’ In addition, because of other external differences between those legislations defining the occupational diseases, the relevant legislations have a problem in that they are likely to be understood as those legislations of separate properties to each other. At the same time, there are an increasing number of administrative litigations disobeying industrial accident judgments of the administrative agency while there are often two different judgments made by the court and the administrative agency. In addition, traditionally, in many cases, it appears to be actually difficult to prove the cases as damaged (diseased) workers are given the burden of proof. Hence, in the concerned thesis, guidelines of occupational diseases provided by the current statutes were critically reviewed focusing on 「Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act」. The study also searched for practical ways to improve the guidelines of occupational diseases that would correspond with the purpose of Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act which is to protect workers.