Work-related illness, work-related accidents, and lack of social security in Colombia.

Clicks: 342
ID: 49349
2017
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
Steady

Ranked #48 of 124 articles by views in Social science & medicine (1982)

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale. Only the 120 most-read articles are drawn; the journal has 124 in total.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Sign in to mint
Abstract
The impacts of neoliberal or market-based social security reforms in health have been extensively studied. How such reforms transformed employment-related insurance and entitlements, however, has received significantly less attention. This study aims to understand how the employment insurance system operates in Colombia and to assess how the experience of workers seeking social security entitlements relates to the system's structure. We conducted an ethnographic study of the Colombian Occupational Risk System between May 2014 and March 2016, with two main components: 1) analysis of the system itself through in-depth interviews with 32 people working in leadership positions and a systematic review of the system's most important legislation, and 2) a study of people who experienced problems receiving entitlements and were challenging the assessment of their work-related illness or accident. We conducted in-depth interviews with 22 people, followed up with half of them, and reviewed their case files. We found that difficulties accessing health care services, payments for medical leave, job reassignments, severance packages, and filing for pension benefits were common to all cases and resulted from overwhelming bureaucratic and administrative demands. Regional and national evaluation bodies dictate whether a given illness or accident is work-related, and establish a percentage of Loss of Wage Earning Capacity (LWEC). People's disabled bodies rarely reached the threshold of 50% LWEC to qualify for disability pensions. The lengthy process that workers were forced to endure to obtain work-related entitlements always involved the judiciary. The three competing for-profit financial sectors (health insurance, pension funds, and Occupational Risk Administrators) actively challenged workers' demands in order to increase their profits. We conclude that these for-profit sectors work contrary to the principles that sustain social security. Indeed, they push sick and disabled workers to unemployment, informality, economic dependence, and ultimately dire poverty.
Reference Key
buitrago-echeverri2017workrelatedsocial Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Buitrago Echeverri, María Teresa;Abadía-Barrero, César Ernesto;Granja Palacios, Consuelo;
Journal Social science & medicine (1982)
Year 2017
DOI
S0277-9536(17)30399-4
URL
Keywords
colombia neoliberalism employment insurance judicialization social security welfare systems

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.