Re-thinking Workers’ Compensation-The Human Rights Perspective, the June 2012 special open-access issue of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, is now available online. These articles emerged from background papers prepared for the national meeting, “Rethinking Workers’ Compensation: Developing Strategies to Protect Injured/Ill Workers’ Basic Human Rights” convened by NESRI in 2010.  Authors include Emily Spieler, John Burton, Jeffrey Hilgert, Katherine Lippel, Rebecca Smith and Martha McCluskey.

In the journal commentary, guest editor Les Boden writes, “The articles in this special issue propose an alternate framework and analysis, a human rights approach that values the dignity and economic security of injured workers and their families.” Mainstream debates around workers’ compensation are very technical, market-driven and cost oriented. The focus is rarely on meeting the needs of injured/ ill workers. This discourse ignores the plight of the injured/ill workers and their grave suffering as they navigate workers’ compensation systems that often function poorly on multiple levels. A human rights framework mandates that those most directly and negatively impacted by a system, in this case injured/ill workers, be at the center of any discussion concerning system reform. Contributors to the AJIM special issue accordingly highlight the many failures of workers’ compensation and explore pro-worker strategies, solutions and alternatives that are grounded in the experiences of injured/ill workers and designed to advance their rights. For a brief overview of the journal articles, click here. To access the articles directly, click here.