Talking about labor rights of the chronically ill from the perspective of Right to illness
Dayeon Kim
In 2020, a service company of facilities management for Sungkonghoe University violated the collective agreement article that says ‘a worker can make a prolonged employment contract that is made yearly by three times the maximum if he/she has no “health problem to work” even though a workers is about to retire’. Then the company fired a worker who took a sick leave of two months to have surgery for bladder cancer and recuperation because they believed that the workers could not have conducted the cleaning job with “a healthy body”. This worker even submitted a doctor’s note that the worker had not had any health problem.
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In a society where “the healthy body” is considered as the ideal and the basics for workers, people with chronic disease or those who have been ill are disqualified for labor market. Child tumor experience even becomes a reason for discrimination. Sick people try to hide their illness or experience of illness, and even hide the minimum necessity to take care of themselves. Furthermore, it is almost impossible for them to stay at work because of overwork that get the situation worse and would be hard for even healthy people even though they are hired.
Such trouble gets worse because of peers who consider illness and pain of workers with chronic disease are selfish excuses. Sick people should prove their pain to others because they can take the steps they need when they can be understood by others. In case illness is not seen easily or the disease does not have name, sick people are suspected of illness easily. As the society forces victims ‘victimness’, it forces sick people ‘sick people-ness’.
Unbearable working conditions including how others think exclude sick people from labor market and deprive labor rights from them. Their experiences not being included in a society as they are even makes it hard for sick people to accept their own illness and themselves experiencing illness.
Right to illness, suggesting a working condition that establishes the sick body as basics
In Korean society, “Right to illness” movement has risen as people who live with illness started to disclose their experiences and lives publicly and claim ‘the right to live with illness in comfort’ since a few years ago.
From the perspective of the Right to illness, “illness(not health) is placed at the center, a sick body is initialized as basics in the society, and ill status is seen as ‘normal’. It is a right by which a sick body is acknowledged as it is and there is no need to have a goal of achieving a healthy life.
Right to illness emphasizes “a society that takes sick and vulnerable bodies as the basics”, not just “a condition that can be recovered from being sick.” What would the labor right be like in that society? It would take the working environment where ‘sick bodies’ can work as prepositions. This can be understood in the same context as the principle of ‘the adaptation of work to the capabilities of workers in the light of their state of physical and mental health’ suggested by ILO.
Also, discourse of the Right to illness criticizes the reality that such factors as violence, exclusion, discrimination, extreme competition, overwork and contaminated environment in a society manifest as illness and pain, but it is individuals that take all the responsibilities of sick bodies. This is directly agreed to the labor safety and health movement claiming that working conditions that hurt workers’ bodies and minds should be changed.
From the perspective of Right to illness, “an identity of a sick body”, which has not been considered properly in society so far, is noticeable. In the context of Right to illness, it is argued that there are sick bodies that have been minority in the health- centered society, the characteristics of these bodies should not be excluded when we discuss proper working conditions, and these bodies have to be the standard.
So far, sick bodies have been excluded and target of hatred because they are not productive, dependent, troublesome, or expelled from the majority easily. However, bodies are open to changes including illness or diverse pains, so sick body identity can be anyone’s. From the perspective of the Right to illness, working conditions have to be made based on the standard of “vulnerable body”, the essential characteristics of human body.
Then, out of a broad spectrum of sick bodies, what should be the standard? “Admitting the sick body” means accepting the body condition as it is. After all, the working condition that Right to illness seeks for is an environment where distinct body condition and experiences of individual are respected. This means that “opening a fissure by challenging the norm of normal and standard body and making diverse norms”.
The standard of the equal work
If we distribute production according to the condition of a body, relatively healthy bodies may have to produce more, which can be misunderstood as reverse discrimination. The way to calculate the “equal work” needs to be reconsidered. In the familiar slogan “equal pay for equal work”, what does equal work take as the standard? Is the so-called same time or same amount of work that does not consider physical(including mental) differences really equal? At least, the equality that is mentioned a lot in Korean society seems to stay in the level of mechanical equality.
“Patient with Crohn disease suffers from worsen inflammation due to overwork or stress, or even gets a hole in the intestine. (…) There might be those people who ‘get over’ the Crohn disease. But, to do so, they should bear the pains. It becomes a struggle to risk life.”
Something that gives fatigue to someone might be a desperate struggle to others. Working conditions that look equal can cause different work intensity to certain individuals with specific body condition. From a perspective of physical pressure, this is discrimination to a sick body. Therefore, the standard of equal labor has to be established from a perspective of same or similar work intensity.
Work field is a caring field
Labor rights are not innately given, but made from a system that ensures that people can work. Therefore, ensuring labor rights to sick bodies means paying attention to sick bodies and making circumstances for them. These bodies can work only to a certain level, and devote themselves to caring for their bodies with pain. However, on the other hand, they keep their lives and try not to be excluded from social networks while they have want to or need to work to demonstrate their abilities. When considering all of the detailed individuality, sick bodies can finally enjoy condition of “equal human beings”.
Focusing on distinct characteristics that sick bodies have, and making proper working conditions for them mean ‘caring’ itself. But, the law makes minimum rules to be observed using enforcement, and it hard to be flexible. In order to ensure labor rights for sick bodies that need delicate adjustment, sometimes it is more important to show ‘caring attitude with delicacy’. We cannot care for others without understanding of distinct characteristics of them, and the law or regulations cannot do it. We should not expect people to change their mind, but make other conditions such as less competitive culture of workplace and arrangment of extra number of workers according to the conditions of sick bodies.
Caring for sick bodies so that they can stay well in the working field is a way to make the working environment safe for all. This is the reason we need to listen to diverse illness experiences and labor rights of sick people and talk with them more often.
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