Japanese Government sets targets to tackle deaths by overwork

[webfact]

JAPAN
Government sets targets to tackle deaths by overwork
The Yomiuri Shimbun
Asia News Network

TOKYO: -- The government presented a draft outline of policies on prevention of death from overwork, or karoshi, to the Liberal Democratic Party and its junior coalition partner Komeito on Tuesday.

The draft outline calls for raising the percentage of companies that support employees' mental health from 60.7 percent in 2013 to 80 percent or more in 2017, with this being characterized as a key point in the outline. The government aims to have the outline approved by the Cabinet next month.

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry compiled such an outline for the first time, based on the Law for Promotion of Measures to Prevent Death from Overwork and Other Reasons, brought into force last November. The draft outline includes numerical targets to promote shortening of working hours and improvement of working conditions.

The government also stipulates other goals with a target of fulfilling them by 2020, such as decreasing the number of employees who work 60 hours or more in a week from 8.8 percent in 2013 to 5 percent or less, while increasing the use of paid vacation days from 48.8 percent in 2013 to 70 percent or higher. The government plans to work harder to promote efforts toward these targets in firms after the outline is approved.

In fiscal 2013, 133 people were recognized as victims of work-related death, after dying of brain and heart diseases caused by overwork, with the figure exceeding 100 for the 12th consecutive year.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/breakingnews/Government-sets-targets-to-tackle-deaths-by-overwo-30263011.html


-- The Nation 2015-06-24

[trogers]

The Japanese do not work hard nor smart. It is all smoke and mirrors. Majority are just serfs having to stay late at their desks because the manager is still at his table.

Looking busy is the trick of their trade.

[BigBadGeordie]

I think this is an excellent initiative and the Thai government should introduce a similar project to protect Thai workers.

[timmyp]

The Japanese do not work hard nor smart. It is all smoke and mirrors. Majority are just serfs having to stay late at their desks because the manager is still at his table.

Looking busy is the trick of their trade.

I fully agree.

Karoshi/karoushi is a problem of bullying in Japan. Certain individuals who are the object of bullying within a company are forced to work crazy hours, then everything they do is rejected and they are forced to repeat the task. I have seen this happening in every workplace I have been to in Japan (I have worked at over 10 companies all over Japan, and freelanced at several more), and every Japanese workplace outside Japan. Bullying within a group is deeply ingrained in the culture.

Solving the problem has to address the rampant problem of bullying in the workplace, not the overtime and vacation issues. Overtime and vacation are certainly problems, but they are separate from people being driven to suicide by working to death or my their own hand.

[djlest]

I wish Thai workers were more like the Japanese!

[Thongkorn]

We have had this for years in the UK, Most firms ask people who die to lay down , then they can distinguish the dead from the workers,

[Credo]

The Japanese do not work hard nor smart. It is all smoke and mirrors. Majority are just serfs having to stay late at their desks because the manager is still at his table.

Looking busy is the trick of their trade.

I fully agree.

Karoshi/karoushi is a problem of bullying in Japan. Certain individuals who are the object of bullying within a company are forced to work crazy hours, then everything they do is rejected and they are forced to repeat the task. I have seen this happening in every workplace I have been to in Japan (I have worked at over 10 companies all over Japan, and freelanced at several more), and every Japanese workplace outside Japan. Bullying within a group is deeply ingrained in the culture.

Solving the problem has to address the rampant problem of bullying in the workplace, not the overtime and vacation issues. Overtime and vacation are certainly problems, but they are separate from people being driven to suicide by working to death or my their own hand.

A very similar type of situation occurs in Thailand, although it doesn't result in death. Those higher up, exert unnecessary and cruel tactics to keep employees in line. They ask for things, without any guidance as to what exactly they want, and then show dissatisfaction and make them start over.

I am guessing that this is sort of an Asian thing, but in Japan it is taken to the extreme. In Thailand the employee usually just quits, often without notice.

[timmyp]

Karoshi/karoushi is a problem of bullying in Japan. Certain individuals who are the object of bullying within a company are forced to work crazy hours, then everything they do is rejected and they are forced to repeat the task. I have seen this happening in every workplace I have been to in Japan (I have worked at over 10 companies all over Japan, and freelanced at several more), and every Japanese workplace outside Japan. Bullying within a group is deeply ingrained in the culture.

Solving the problem has to address the rampant problem of bullying in the workplace, not the overtime and vacation issues. Overtime and vacation are certainly problems, but they are separate from people being driven to suicide by working to death or my their own hand.

A very similar type of situation occurs in Thailand, although it doesn't result in death. Those higher up, exert unnecessary and cruel tactics to keep employees in line. They ask for things, without any guidance as to what exactly they want, and then show dissatisfaction and make them start over.

I am guessing that this is sort of an Asian thing, but in Japan it is taken to the extreme. In Thailand the employee usually just quits, often without notice.

I am curious about how this plays out in Thailand. I have heard from Thai people that there is something similar. I wonder about how prevalent it is here, and how extreme it gets. There isn't workplace, bar, social group, organization, etc. that isn't engaged in this in Japan. It's like a requirement for every type of group structure.

More than an Asian thing, I think it's part of the human condition. It's definitely the way that the playground was run when I was in elementary school and junior high.

What seems more common in Asia that you mention: The boss having free reign to be unreasonable to the employees, and intentionally having childish temper tantrums simply to assert his position. Not that it doesn't happen in the west, but just how par-for-the-course it seems in Japan, Thailand, Korea...

[Credo]

I think this exists because of two things, first the social structure which is very hierarchical and because of the cheap and largely unskilled labor force in Asia.

A Thai person I know well recently left for the US to live and work. He said that he simply could not work for a Thai employer, because they micromanage everything. In his case, he is a well educated person with a lot of experience, but as he says, the boss will hire you to do a job, then tell you how to do and then blame you when it doesn't work out well.

I have seen this first hand.

If/when Asia has to compete on an even footing, whereby they no longer have relatively cheap, expendable labor, they will have to change this type of management style.

[RickBradford]

I've seen this in Singapore and Vietnam.

When you're junior, you grovel. When you're senior, you bully.

I've seen people change in the space of a morning simply through getting a minor promotion which enables them to be unpleasant to people who were previously their equals.

[timmyp]

I've seen this in Singapore and Vietnam.

When you're junior, you grovel. When you're senior, you bully.

I've seen people change in the space of a morning simply through getting a minor promotion which enables them to be unpleasant to people who were previously their equals.

In Japan, it's the coworkers that do the most bullying. The boss will dump down on the underlings, but the coworkers will be the most active in the bullying, and that's why there's no escaping it.

So in Japan, it's not just a hierarchical thing.

[Scott]

Off-topic post removed.