Friday, October 14, 2016 6:33:18 PM
The country working itself to death
March 7, 2015 9:39am
Around 4.74 million people in Japan work more than 60 hours per week.
FRANK CHUNG and AAPnews.com.au
IN this country, people are literally working themselves to death.
Every year, hundreds of overstressed Japanese workers succumb to heart attack, stroke or suicide due to a lack of work-life balance.
The problem, which first rose to prominence in the 1980s, has become so bad it even has its own name: karoshi. Death by overwork.
Last week, a British expat living in Tokyo going by the handle ‘Stu in Japan’ posted a video on YouTube titled ‘A week in the life of a Tokyo salary man .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po8IPh64rVM ’.
INSERT: embed
The video diary documented a typical 80-hour week during his financial services company’s “busy season” from January to March — 13-hour days for six days a week, leaving the office after 11pm every night, with barely time to squeeze in dinner.
It was a humorous look at a serious issue.
“There are definitely people in Tokyo who do this all year round in order to support their families,” he wrote. “I couldn’t imagine having to do this if I had those kinds of responsibilities as well.”
Late last year, the Japanese government finally decided to do something about the endemic culture of overwork, which has been blamed not just on a growing number of deaths, but also the country’s critically low birth rate and declining productivity .. http://www.economywatch.com/features/Government-moves-to-end-Japans-culture-of-death-by-overwork.03-05-15.html .
Although Japan is notorious for hard work, it’s equally known for inefficiency and bureaucracy. Workers sit around in the name of team spirit, despite questionable performance.
Younger workers feel uncomfortable going home before their bosses do. Working overtime for free, called “sah-bee-soo zahn-gyo”, or “service overtime”, is prevalent.
Japanese salarymen pack a pub in Tokyo's business district in the evening. Source: AP
Every year, hundreds of overstressed Japanese workers succumb to ‘karoshi’. Source: Supplied
According to Japanese government figures from 2013, around 22 per cent of Japanese full-time employees worked more than 49 hours a week, while 8.8, or around 4.74 million people, worked more than 60 hours per week.
That 60-hour mark crosses the threshold of 80 hours monthly overtime, which is one of the criteria used in determining whether a death can be attributed to overwork.
According to The Japan Times, more than 300 people each year over the past decade have been awarded compensation .. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2014/11/15/editorials/getting-a-grip-on-karoshi/#.VPkjksltyVp .. under work-related accident insurance after suffering heart attacks or strokes, with a growing number claiming damages for work-related mental health problems.
In November, a restaurant chain was ordered to pay ¥57.9 million ($A620,000) to the family of one worker who hanged himself after working an average of 190 hours of monthly overtime in the seven months leading up to his death.
Barely half the holiday days allotted to Japanese workers are ever taken, an average of nine days per individual a year. Under the new law, employers will be responsible for ensuring their workers actually take their holidays.
The new law will allow for more flexible work hours, encouraging parents to spend more time with their children during summer months, for instance, when school is closed. Experts say the law is a start, while acknowledging the roots of the dilemma lie deep.
In an editorial last November .. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2014/11/15/editorials/getting-a-grip-on-karoshi/#.VPkjksltyVp , The Japan Times welcomed the new law despite describing the move as “largely symbolic”.
“The law makes it the duty of the government to take steps to eliminate overwork-induced deaths or suicides of employed workers, but it does not impose new work-hour regulations or penalties on businesses that have employees work excessive hours,” the paper wrote.
http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/the-country-working-itself-to-death/news-story/5c29cd052ce1b58e14247fc5f349163b
And sadly to one more alleged consequence of the overwork work ethic in modern day Japan.
Labor agency rules suicide by ex-Dentsu employee as death by overwork
By Roland Shichijo on October 8, 2016
Victim logged 130 hours of overtime in a month; slept 10 hours a week
Matsuri Takahashi
The government labor agency ruled that Matsuri Takahashi’s suicide was death by overwork
TOKYO (TR) – A government labor agency here ruled that a woman who used to work at Dentsu who committed suicide last Christmas was death by overwork, or karoshi, after records showed 130 hours of overtime in one month and just 10 hours of sleep a week, her bereaved family’s lawyer said on Friday.
The family’s lawyer said at a press conference that the Tokyo Labor Bureau found the death of Matsuri Takahashi, 24, who jumped from her dormitory on December 25, 2015, to be death by overwork after records showed she clocked 130 hours of overtime in October and 99 hours in November with constant late nights and work on what should have been her days off, the Sankei Shimbun .. http://www.sankei.com/affairs/news/161007/afr1610070012-n1.html .. reports (Oct. 7).
Takahashi was also in a state of depression, labor bureau officials said.
Takahashi’s seniors at Dentsu, which bills itself as an advertising and public relations firm, had also bullied her by saying such things as “your 20 hours of overtime is useless to this company,” Fuji News Network .. http://www.fnn-news.com/news/headlines/articles/CONN00338389.html .. reported.
On what appears to be Takahashi’s Twitter account, she tweeted on October 31, 2015 .. https://twitter.com/matsuririri/status/660229233122258945 , that her department head said: “Putting on a sleepy face during meetings means lack of management.” “Your hair is a mess, and don’t come to work with your eyes all red.” “For you to be struggling with this amount of work means a total lack of capacity.” Me: “Not even red eyes?””
‘Death would be bliss’
Takahashi tweeted .. https://twitter.com/matsuririri .. about days where she would only get two hours of sleep and that she “would rather die if this went on” and “death would be bliss.”
She also tweeted on December 16, 2015 .. https://twitter.com/matsuririri/status/677107967540387840 : “Thinking I want to die every day, each of them being this stressful. I wonder what lies ahead if I overcome them.”
“I’m a newcomer 23-year-old OL [Office lady] who has fallen into transmigration, where no matter how late I come home, I have to search for new cat videos for an hour every night or else I can’t sleep. My biggest worry is the residence tax starting next June, and what I look forward to every month is going to Tsukiji .. http://www.tokyoreporter.com/2008/07/02/tsukiji-wholesalers-under-the-knife/ .. for sushi .. http://www.tokyoreporter.com/2016/10/04/osaka-sushi-chain-apologizes-for-wasabi-terrorism-against-foreign-customers/ .. alone on pay day,” reads another tweet dated November 21, 2015, on Takahashi’s account.
Takahashi’s 53-year-old mother, Yukimi Takahashi, said at the press conference that “my daughter will never come back to me.”
“No job could be more important than life,” Yukimi said. “I strongly hope for the central government to instruct businesses as soon as possible.
“My daughter was telling her friends and colleagues she would get only 10 hours of sleep in a single week and the only thing she felt was just a desire to sleep…Why did she have to die?” TBS News .. http://news.tbs.co.jp/newseye/tbs_newseye2886051.html .. quoted Yukimi as saying.
Takahashi graduated from the University of Tokyo in March 2015 and was hired at Dentsu in the following April, joining the PR firm’s advertising division. She also started handling advertising work for securities companies in October the same year.
Dentsu released a statement saying the company is “taking the suicide of an employee seriously.”
“The company is not making comments at this time as the contents regarding the recognition that it was a work-related death have not been grasped,” Dentsu said.
The latest blow to Dentsu’s image comes after the company was found last month to have deliberately falsified invoices and overcharged clients resulting in inappropriate business practices worth some 230 million yen, according to the Sankei Shimbun .. http://www.sankei.com/affairs/news/160923/afr1609230014-n1.html .
Crossing the line
The central government drafted its first white paper on death by overwork, which was approved by the Cabinet on Friday.
Of 1,700 companies that were surveyed, 20 percent of them had regular full-time employees (seishainn) crossing the government’s so-called “karoshi line” of over 80 hours of overtime a month, and 11.9 percent were pushing its workers with overtime exceeding 100 hours.
http://www.tokyoreporter.com/2016/10/08/labor-agency-rules-ex-dentsu-worker-suicide-as-death-by-overwork/
See also:
In A Burned-Out World, Global Leaders Make Room For Well-Being In Their Definition Of Success
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=96210410
Terrifying season’s greetings from our future robot overlords and their makers
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=119397889
Students, Meet Your New Teacher, Mr. Robot
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=116281597
Robots are starting to break the law and nobody knows what to do about it
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=109568181
Robot Kills Man At Volkswagen Plant In Germany
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=115110937
Survey robot breaks down inside Fukushima No. 1 reactor in under three hours
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=112694066
Elon Musk on Superintelligent Robots: We'll Be Lucky If They Enslave Us as Pets
[ the YouTube here is kapoot so this one inserted here
Elon Musk elaborates on his A.I. concerns (2016.9.15)
also physicist Lawrence Krauss as a hopeful voice
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=112469581
fuagf -- 50 years absolute max, could well be within 25 or so -- 50 years out
there is no question they will have been fully self-conscious and self-directed...
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=116143335
March 7, 2015 9:39am
Around 4.74 million people in Japan work more than 60 hours per week.
FRANK CHUNG and AAPnews.com.au
IN this country, people are literally working themselves to death.
Every year, hundreds of overstressed Japanese workers succumb to heart attack, stroke or suicide due to a lack of work-life balance.
The problem, which first rose to prominence in the 1980s, has become so bad it even has its own name: karoshi. Death by overwork.
Last week, a British expat living in Tokyo going by the handle ‘Stu in Japan’ posted a video on YouTube titled ‘A week in the life of a Tokyo salary man .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po8IPh64rVM ’.
INSERT: embed
The video diary documented a typical 80-hour week during his financial services company’s “busy season” from January to March — 13-hour days for six days a week, leaving the office after 11pm every night, with barely time to squeeze in dinner.
It was a humorous look at a serious issue.
“There are definitely people in Tokyo who do this all year round in order to support their families,” he wrote. “I couldn’t imagine having to do this if I had those kinds of responsibilities as well.”
Late last year, the Japanese government finally decided to do something about the endemic culture of overwork, which has been blamed not just on a growing number of deaths, but also the country’s critically low birth rate and declining productivity .. http://www.economywatch.com/features/Government-moves-to-end-Japans-culture-of-death-by-overwork.03-05-15.html .
Although Japan is notorious for hard work, it’s equally known for inefficiency and bureaucracy. Workers sit around in the name of team spirit, despite questionable performance.
Younger workers feel uncomfortable going home before their bosses do. Working overtime for free, called “sah-bee-soo zahn-gyo”, or “service overtime”, is prevalent.
Japanese salarymen pack a pub in Tokyo's business district in the evening. Source: AP
Every year, hundreds of overstressed Japanese workers succumb to ‘karoshi’. Source: Supplied
According to Japanese government figures from 2013, around 22 per cent of Japanese full-time employees worked more than 49 hours a week, while 8.8, or around 4.74 million people, worked more than 60 hours per week.
That 60-hour mark crosses the threshold of 80 hours monthly overtime, which is one of the criteria used in determining whether a death can be attributed to overwork.
According to The Japan Times, more than 300 people each year over the past decade have been awarded compensation .. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2014/11/15/editorials/getting-a-grip-on-karoshi/#.VPkjksltyVp .. under work-related accident insurance after suffering heart attacks or strokes, with a growing number claiming damages for work-related mental health problems.
In November, a restaurant chain was ordered to pay ¥57.9 million ($A620,000) to the family of one worker who hanged himself after working an average of 190 hours of monthly overtime in the seven months leading up to his death.
Barely half the holiday days allotted to Japanese workers are ever taken, an average of nine days per individual a year. Under the new law, employers will be responsible for ensuring their workers actually take their holidays.
The new law will allow for more flexible work hours, encouraging parents to spend more time with their children during summer months, for instance, when school is closed. Experts say the law is a start, while acknowledging the roots of the dilemma lie deep.
In an editorial last November .. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2014/11/15/editorials/getting-a-grip-on-karoshi/#.VPkjksltyVp , The Japan Times welcomed the new law despite describing the move as “largely symbolic”.
“The law makes it the duty of the government to take steps to eliminate overwork-induced deaths or suicides of employed workers, but it does not impose new work-hour regulations or penalties on businesses that have employees work excessive hours,” the paper wrote.
http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/the-country-working-itself-to-death/news-story/5c29cd052ce1b58e14247fc5f349163b
And sadly to one more alleged consequence of the overwork work ethic in modern day Japan.
Labor agency rules suicide by ex-Dentsu employee as death by overwork
By Roland Shichijo on October 8, 2016
Victim logged 130 hours of overtime in a month; slept 10 hours a week
Matsuri Takahashi
The government labor agency ruled that Matsuri Takahashi’s suicide was death by overwork
TOKYO (TR) – A government labor agency here ruled that a woman who used to work at Dentsu who committed suicide last Christmas was death by overwork, or karoshi, after records showed 130 hours of overtime in one month and just 10 hours of sleep a week, her bereaved family’s lawyer said on Friday.
The family’s lawyer said at a press conference that the Tokyo Labor Bureau found the death of Matsuri Takahashi, 24, who jumped from her dormitory on December 25, 2015, to be death by overwork after records showed she clocked 130 hours of overtime in October and 99 hours in November with constant late nights and work on what should have been her days off, the Sankei Shimbun .. http://www.sankei.com/affairs/news/161007/afr1610070012-n1.html .. reports (Oct. 7).
Takahashi was also in a state of depression, labor bureau officials said.
Takahashi’s seniors at Dentsu, which bills itself as an advertising and public relations firm, had also bullied her by saying such things as “your 20 hours of overtime is useless to this company,” Fuji News Network .. http://www.fnn-news.com/news/headlines/articles/CONN00338389.html .. reported.
On what appears to be Takahashi’s Twitter account, she tweeted on October 31, 2015 .. https://twitter.com/matsuririri/status/660229233122258945 , that her department head said: “Putting on a sleepy face during meetings means lack of management.” “Your hair is a mess, and don’t come to work with your eyes all red.” “For you to be struggling with this amount of work means a total lack of capacity.” Me: “Not even red eyes?””
‘Death would be bliss’
Takahashi tweeted .. https://twitter.com/matsuririri .. about days where she would only get two hours of sleep and that she “would rather die if this went on” and “death would be bliss.”
She also tweeted on December 16, 2015 .. https://twitter.com/matsuririri/status/677107967540387840 : “Thinking I want to die every day, each of them being this stressful. I wonder what lies ahead if I overcome them.”
“I’m a newcomer 23-year-old OL [Office lady] who has fallen into transmigration, where no matter how late I come home, I have to search for new cat videos for an hour every night or else I can’t sleep. My biggest worry is the residence tax starting next June, and what I look forward to every month is going to Tsukiji .. http://www.tokyoreporter.com/2008/07/02/tsukiji-wholesalers-under-the-knife/ .. for sushi .. http://www.tokyoreporter.com/2016/10/04/osaka-sushi-chain-apologizes-for-wasabi-terrorism-against-foreign-customers/ .. alone on pay day,” reads another tweet dated November 21, 2015, on Takahashi’s account.
Takahashi’s 53-year-old mother, Yukimi Takahashi, said at the press conference that “my daughter will never come back to me.”
“No job could be more important than life,” Yukimi said. “I strongly hope for the central government to instruct businesses as soon as possible.
“My daughter was telling her friends and colleagues she would get only 10 hours of sleep in a single week and the only thing she felt was just a desire to sleep…Why did she have to die?” TBS News .. http://news.tbs.co.jp/newseye/tbs_newseye2886051.html .. quoted Yukimi as saying.
Takahashi graduated from the University of Tokyo in March 2015 and was hired at Dentsu in the following April, joining the PR firm’s advertising division. She also started handling advertising work for securities companies in October the same year.
Dentsu released a statement saying the company is “taking the suicide of an employee seriously.”
“The company is not making comments at this time as the contents regarding the recognition that it was a work-related death have not been grasped,” Dentsu said.
The latest blow to Dentsu’s image comes after the company was found last month to have deliberately falsified invoices and overcharged clients resulting in inappropriate business practices worth some 230 million yen, according to the Sankei Shimbun .. http://www.sankei.com/affairs/news/160923/afr1609230014-n1.html .
Crossing the line
The central government drafted its first white paper on death by overwork, which was approved by the Cabinet on Friday.
Of 1,700 companies that were surveyed, 20 percent of them had regular full-time employees (seishainn) crossing the government’s so-called “karoshi line” of over 80 hours of overtime a month, and 11.9 percent were pushing its workers with overtime exceeding 100 hours.
http://www.tokyoreporter.com/2016/10/08/labor-agency-rules-ex-dentsu-worker-suicide-as-death-by-overwork/
See also:
In A Burned-Out World, Global Leaders Make Room For Well-Being In Their Definition Of Success
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=96210410
Terrifying season’s greetings from our future robot overlords and their makers
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=119397889
Students, Meet Your New Teacher, Mr. Robot
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=116281597
Robots are starting to break the law and nobody knows what to do about it
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=109568181
Robot Kills Man At Volkswagen Plant In Germany
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=115110937
Survey robot breaks down inside Fukushima No. 1 reactor in under three hours
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=112694066
Elon Musk on Superintelligent Robots: We'll Be Lucky If They Enslave Us as Pets
[ the YouTube here is kapoot so this one inserted here
Elon Musk elaborates on his A.I. concerns (2016.9.15)
also physicist Lawrence Krauss as a hopeful voice
]
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=112469581
fuagf -- 50 years absolute max, could well be within 25 or so -- 50 years out
there is no question they will have been fully self-conscious and self-directed...
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=116143335
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
Join the InvestorsHub Community
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
