 Top court says a medical intern is a paid worker The Supreme Court on June 3 ruled for the first time that a medical intern is legally a paid worker and that Kansai Medical University has overseer responsibility and should pay him real wages. The court said: "Clinical internship includes the educational aspect and the labor aspect. Mori Hirohito, medical intern at KMU Hospital, should be regarded as a worker offering his labor under KMU supervision." This lawsuit was filed by bereaved families of Mori, who died in 1998 at the age of 26 from a heart attack caused by an excessive workload. Mori's death was two and half months after he began his service at KMUH. During this period, he worked 388 hours overtime, and the standard working hours for him was 114 hours a week, nearly three times of the legal 40 hours. However, KMU paid him not wages but a "scholarship" of 60,000 yen a month, which is far below the legal minimum wage. Referring to former health, labor, and welfare minister Sakaguchi Chikara's parliamentary pledge in 2001 to improve the working conditions of medical interns, Japanese Communist Party House of Councilors member Koike Akira said that the JCP will continue efforts to improve the working conditions of all medical workers, including medical interns. Koike said, "Working conditions conducive to karoshi (death from overwork) not only endanger medical safety but also threaten medical services in the future." - Akahata June 4, 2005 |