Laws, Policies, and Collective Agreements Protecting Low-wage and Digital Platform Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this commentary describes and compares shifting employment and occupational health social protections of low-wage workers, including self-employed digital platform workers. Through a focus on eight advanced economy countries, this paper identifies how employment misclassification and definitions of employees were handled in law and policy. Debates about minimum wage and occupational health and safety standards as they relate to worker well-being are considered. Finally, we discuss promising changes introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic that protect the health of low-wage and self-employed workers. Overall, we describe an ongoing "haves" and a "have not" divide, with on the one extreme, traditional job arrangements with good work-and-health social protections and, on the other extreme, low-wage and self-employed digital platform workers who are mostly left out of schemes. However, during the pandemic small and often temporary gains occurred and are discussed.

Analysis of Japanese Assistive Devices Social Security Policy / 中国康复理论与实践

Objective:To sort out the assistive device social security policy of Japan. Methods:The assistive devices social security policy for the older adults and the disabled in Japan was summarized in term of four dimensions: who, what, how to deliver and how to fund. Results:Japanese assistive device social security policy covered most of disabled groups according to the legal protections, delivering a variety of assistive devices products and services. Meanwhile, it has tried to avoid over expenditure through ways of lump-sum control, unit price and quantity control, users self-pay and strict evaluation system. For the service delivery system, the evaluators were strictly neutral, while the providers were in market. The funding came from user-payments, public finance and insurances, etc. Conclusion:Japan has established a mature social security policy system and service system for assistive devices, which can be used as a reference for China.