4/3/2021 Japanese still suffer ‘death by overwork’ as long hours persist | Financial Times

Japan
Japanese still suffer ‘death by overwork’ as long hours persist
A fifth of companies admit employees clocking at least 80 hours overtime a month

© Bloomberg

Leo Lewis in Tokyo OCTOBER 9 2016

Japan’s first government white paper on the still largely taboo phenomenon of “death
by overwork” has revealed that a fifth of surveyed companies acknowledge their full-
time staff works dangerously long hours.

The 280-page report — published almost three decades after Japan legally recognised
death driven by overwork, known as karoshi — acknowledged that its contents made
for bleak reading.

Nearly 11 per cent of companies surveyed said they had full-time staff working at least
80 hours of overtime a month — a level which, by official acknowledgment, brings an
increased risk of death from cardiovascular issues and other problems. Almost 12 per
cent of companies surveyed said they had staff working more than 100 hours of
overtime a month.

The white paper, which was forced into existence by a 2014 private member’s bill
obliging the government take responsibility for preventing deaths and suicide through
overwork, follows a year in which karoshi compensation claims surged to a record
high of 1,456.

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4/3/2021 Japanese still suffer ‘death by overwork’ as long hours persist | Financial Times

Even then, say lawyers who have represented the families of victims, the issue is
greatly understated and barely discussed. The survey had hoped to base its research
on responses from 10,000 Japanese companies; in fact, it received replies from just
1,743.

Government efforts have yet to bite, say labour groups. Gentle slogans urging armies
of reluctant salarymen “let’s work shorter hours”, or more practical measures such as
turning office lights out at 7pm, are making no visible dent in a work culture that has
devised few mechanisms for evaluating achievement beyond simply counting the
hours worked.

The fundamental problem, said Koichi Nakano, a political scholar at Tokyo’s Sophia
University, is that neither the government nor the business sector is especially keen to
inform workers of their rights and to uphold them.

“At the heart of the issue is a deeply unenlightened but persistent attitude on the part
of the government and management that regards selfless dedication to the company
shown through long hours at the office as a prime virtue . . . in reality it is arguably
responsible for the steady decline of the Japanese corporate competitiveness,” said
Prof Nakano.

Reported karoshi deaths in the 2015 financial year ending in March, published by the
labour ministry in April, were concentrated on sectors such as social services and
construction. These are on the front lines of Japan’s chronic labour shortage — itself a
slow-burning crisis that derives from the country’s long-term demographic decline
and historic resistance to large-scale immigration.

The survey underlying the new white paper found 44 per cent of IT companies
admitted that some of their employees worked more than 80 hours of overtime a
month.

But the problem is more widespread. The publication of the white paper came just a
week after a Tokyo labour standards office ruled that the suicide of young graduate
recruit at the Dentsu advertising agency had been a case of karoshi. The family of
Matsuri Takahashi, 24, said she took her life after racking up 105 hours of monthly
overtime. She had worked in Dentsu’s digital advertising division — the unit at the
centre of a developing scandal that involved overcharging clients, and which Dentsu
blamed on staff shortages.

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4/3/2021 Japanese still suffer ‘death by overwork’ as long hours persist | Financial Times

Across the full- and part-time workforce, the average hours worked by individuals are
falling very slightly, said the white paper, but that includes the rising cohorts of part
time workers.

Among full-time staffers, on whom karoshi-generating pressures fall most heavily,

approximately 21 per cent of Japanese work an average of at least 49 or more hours a
week — far above the 12.5 per cent and 16 per cent rates reported in Britain and the
US respectively.

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