Revised Industrial Safety and Health Act – The Handling of Workers Health Information

Another of the laws related to the Working Reform laws is the Industrial Health and Safety Act.
These changes were passed by the Diet in July last year and enacted from April this year.
In advance of these laws being enacted the Ministry of Health Welfare and Labor issued a Q&A on
December 28 last year that contained comments related to recommending Companies to work with
their Health and Safety Committees to determine the treatment of the relevant information (PMP
interprets this as information that is relevant to workers’ health management) provided to the Company Doctor.

The Ministry has this time provided a sample of regulations for the governance of this health related
information and we attach the link below. It is a PDF document that is in Japanese only. It also
contains the full Q&A which you might helpful 
https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/000497426.pdf

Unfortunately, the answers contained in the document are extremely unclear and problems have arisen.Specifically, the Ministry have recommended that the guidelines be included in the Rules of Employment.
However, when confirming with the local authorities they are not that adamant although agree that it is desirable. That said PMP do not agree that including this in the Rules of Employment is the right place for this to be. That said it is the employer’s duty to protect the health of workers, and the importance of the regulations that determine the collection of health information and how to handle that information is not disputed. However, the role of these regulations differs from the Rules of Employment which
① clearly define the working conditions and ② specify the rules which govern the workers.

Rather these desired regulations are more in keeping with the Act on the Protection of Personal
Information and hence the Protection of Personal Information Regulations which organizations have
created. This law is not governed by the Ministry of Health Welfare and Labour and the Regulations
are separate and are independent of the Rules of Employment.

That said, the regulations determine the handling of the worker’s health information, and hence in the creation of these regulations working with the Health and Safety Committee which includes
representatives of the workers as per the guidelines of the Ministry is appropriate. Once this is
completed notifying the employees of these regulations is appropriate.

Thank you.