Japan to study ‘death from overwork’
Measures target rise in cases
TOKYO — The Japanese government is planning measures to cope with soaring cases of deaths from overwork, known as karoshi, as well as the first large-scale research to assess the current extent of the problem.
The measures will be implemented based on an outline by the cabinet this month to prevent karoshi and other work-related problems.
The outline stipulates research on karoshi, the improvement of consultation offices and educational activities aimed at prevention. It also sets numerical goals including the reduction of the percentage of workers who work for 60 hours or longer per week to five per cent or less, and raises the percentage of workers who take paid leave to at least 70 per cent or higher.
Though karoshi became recognized as a social problem in the late 1980s, recent years have seen more than 200 deaths, including suicides.
“At last, the government has become willing to seriously conduct research,” a 35-year-old man in Kobe said. His elder brother had been working for a cellphone sales company and suddenly died at 33 because of ischemic heart failure in 2010.
His death was not recognized by a labour standards inspection office as being eligible for workers’ compensation because his working conditions failed to meet criteria that a worker’s overtime had to exceed 80 hours a month, on average, in a period of two to six months before symptoms appeared.
His bereaved family members filed a lawsuit in February. The court overturned the labour standards inspection office’s judgment and recognized his death as meeting the criteria for workers’ compensation. The central government has appealed the ruling.
The court made the judgment after considering a wider variety of factors at the man’s workplace. For example, the worker had clocked an average 89 hours of overtime a month over a three-year period. He was also judged to be under an excessively heavy burden from having to respond to customer claims.
Karoshi was overlooked during Japan’s period of high economic growth, and only became a social problem in the latter half of the 1980s after lawyers started receiving more and more requests for consultations over the issue.
According to the Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry, the deaths of 121 workers in fiscal 2014 were recognized as karoshi, and 99 were recognized as suicide or attempted suicide caused by overwork.
However, other statistics from the ministry show that about 30,000 workers die annually mainly due to brain and heart diseases. Statistics from the National Police Agency and other relevant authorities indicate that about 2,000 workers annually commit suicide partly because of trouble at their workplaces.
In a five-year period until fiscal 2014, 3,557 workers were recognized as developing diseases caused by overwork — from brain and heart diseases to mental illnesses caused by stress. Of them, 997 had committed suicide or attempted to commit suicide.
The research will gather data on working hours and other working conditions before and after the problems surfaced, including those in the past, to identify the kind of working conditions that can result in karoshi and similar problems.
Some are questioning whether the research will be able to solve the overwork problems.
Though the Labour Standards Law stipulates that working hours should be eight hours a day and 40 hours a week, the lengths can effectively be extended indefinitely if employers and labour unions sign agreements.
European countries have introduced some regulations, such as setting upper limits on working hours and a so-called interval restriction that obliges firms to ensure there are at least 11 hours between the end of a day’s work and the start of the next working day.
But a government council that discussed the contents of Japan’s outline to prevent karoshi could not step in to demand revisions of the legal system.
While probes into the causes of karoshi have not sufficiently progressed, employers are making trial and-efforts.
Kao Corp., a major daily commodity maker, confirms whether its employees work for longer hours than their self-reported figures with records of entries into and exits from office buildings. The company also introduced a regular stress-check system seven years ago.
“There could be employees who feel stressed even if their working hours are relatively short,” a Kao official said.
A Kao official said: “We’re unsure whether karoshi can be prevented only by eliminating long working hours. We’ll closely watch the health conditions of the employees while making various efforts.”