Labor Law Reform to Include More Occupational Diseases

Legislators are advancing the reform of Mexico’s Federal Labor Law, which will include an update to the table of occupational diseases. The reform includes the publication of a Catalog of Occupational Illness Evaluation Questionnaires, which is pending approval from the National Regulatory Improvement Commission (CONAMER). The catalog will work as a guideline for medical professionals in their evaluations. 

This reform make Mexico’s list of occupational diseases one of the most complete ones in Latin America, adding 88 diseases, according to the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare (STPS). “This update includes work-related diseases that were not previously included, such as myocardial infarction due to exposure to chemicals, women's diseases such as miscarriages and endometriosis, COVID-19, among others,” reads the reform, according to El Economista.

Once CONAMER approves the list, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador will send it to the Chamber of Deputies to begin the legislative process. This reform comes after 52 years without major changes to the list of occupational diseases, despite the changes and expansion of workspaces into new zones. The 88 new diseases include endometriosis, digestive conditions, burnout, COVID-19 and cancers of occupational origin. 

“In the Article 513 of the Federal Labor Law, the table of diseases will remain, in the 513 Bis that we are proposing, the table of valuations that was left out of the law with the last legal modification will be annexed,” said Cointa Lagunes Cruz, Director of Occupational Safety and Health Standardizations, STPS, to El Economista. 

This table will be aligned with the new International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) of the World Health Organization (WHO), which has been applied since January 2022. COVID-19, for example, is listed alongside other infectious diseases and exposure is classified according to four levels of risk: 

• Very high: Workers are in direct contact with confirmed or suspected sources of the agent during medical procedures. 
• High: Workers in medical units where there are suspected or confirmed cases of the agent. 
• Medium: Workers that provide care where there is no known exposure to the agent but it is possible to find it. 
• Low: Workers that are not in contact with the general public.