The suicide of a woman who worked excessive hours at Japan’s biggest advertising agency has prompted the company to lower the amount of overtime employees can book.
Starting next month, workers at Dentsu will not be able to log more than 65 hours of overtime a month — down from the current limit of 70, company spokesman Shusaku Kannan said on Tuesday.
Tokyo’s Labor Standard Inspection Office determined that overwork pushed 24-year-old Matsuri Takahashi to take her own life after she suffered a mental breakdown, local media said.
Takahashi worked more than 105 extra hours in a single month, the Asahi Shimbun reported.
Dentsu’s decision comes as the government explores policies to improve the nation’s working practices.
A government-backed panel began meeting last month to tackle issues ranging from excessive overtime, low salaries of part-time workers and a stagnant female workforce.
“Workplace reform is not just a societal issue, it is an economic one as well,” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters in Tokyo on Sept. 27 at the first panel meeting.
“If we revise overtime rules, we will improve work-life balance, making it easier for employees — including women and the elderly — to work,” he said.
Nearly a quarter of Japan’s companies reported some workers logging more than 80 hours of overtime a month, according to a Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare survey of more than 1,700 firms last fiscal year.
About 21 percent of employees worked more than 49 hours a week, compared with 16 percent in the US, 12.5 percent in the UK and 32 percent in South Korea, the ministry said in a paper on karoshi, or death from overwork.
“We can change this way of working in Japan,” said Naohiro Yashiro, a professor at the Faculty of Global Business at Showa Women’s University in Tokyo.
“If we set proper rules it is not impossible for the Japanese to work in the same way as the Europeans,” he said.
Dentsu is the latest company to make a concerted effort to limit overtime. Fifty firms, including Daiwa Securities Group and Seven & I Holdings, have signed a pact to end excessive work hours.
Yahoo Japan is considering the implementation of a four-day workweek, and from this month, it began covering commuting expenses by bullet train — subsidizing travel by up to ¥150,000 (US$1,449) a month, according to the Nikkei Shimbun.
Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike has also mandated that staff in government offices must go home by 8pm.
Even as Japan is looking to bring in more overseas workers to bolster the shrinking workforce, the ministry this week recognized the 2014 heart failure of a 27-year-old Filipino trainee in Gifu Prefecture as a death caused by overwork.
He had logged up to 122.5 hours of overtime in one month, local media reports said.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was