The Importance of Social Security and Labour Law for Compliance with Public Health

Abstract

The containment of global pandemics and also epidemics calls for strong reactions by states, societies and individuals. How people react and comply with containment rules—be it voluntary behaviour or government-imposed rules—is a genuinely social and political phenomenon. Public health policies assume rational action but are confronted with significant limits. Based on experience with the HIV/Aids Epidemic and on previous findings of social and behavioral research, we argue that people are more willing to comply with official recommendations and regulations under certain conditions: if the behavioural requirements are legally correct and non-discriminatory; if they respect the protection of personal data and privacy and finally, if they secure their economic livelihood (e.g. social security benefits and protection against dismissal during quarantine). So far, the influence of social security and labour law protection on responsible human behaviour has hardly been researched. From the perspective of health justice (Benfer et al., SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020), legal and policy responses must take into account preexisting discriminations. Strong, mandatory interventions must be accompanied by legal protection and social support to enable those behaviours and minimize negative impacts. To analyse the influences of social security and labour law protection on compliance with containment regulation, we summarize existing studies and look briefly into a unique, yet regional Swiss dataset, which contains information on compliance with specific measures that are particularly important for containment, have a high level of intervention and strong potential impacts on people’s livelihoods, namely symptom-induced testing, isolation and quarantine. Research has consistently shown that socio-economic inequalities translate into health inequality (overview Pärli and Fischer, Tagungsband #iuscoronae, Helbing Lichtenhahn, 2021). Disadvantaged populations have more health care needs but receive less (Riou et al., Lancet Public Health 6(9):e683–e691, 2021). Workers in precarious employment conditions and in low-wage and low-skilled labour have been hit hardest during the pandemic (Keidel et al., COVCO Basel Corona Immunitas. Wissenschaftlicher Schlussbericht. Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, 2021, 5f.; Eichenbaum et al., Inequality in Life and Death. Cambridge, MA., 2021, 4f.; Papageorge et al. 2020): they were more likely to lose their jobs, work in face-to-face jobs with a higher risk of contracting the virus and were less able to protect themselves, e.g., by teleworking, social distancing or staying at home. In this contribution, we emphasize the role of social protection, namely social security and labour law on the reception of and the (in)ability to comply with public health measures. In terms of methodology, we will conduct a comprehensive and non-country-specific literature review. This will be supplemented as far as possible with the presentation and analysis of empirical data. We propose further thoughts on legal theory and call for more comparative studies.

This project was funded by the Health Departments of Basel-Stadt and Basel-Landschaft and is long-term cohort study conducted by Swiss TPH.

Medea Imboden and Nicole Probst-Hensch are provided the data of Covco Basel.