The Council of Labor Affairs yesterday said an investigation had concluded that the sudden death last year of a 29-year-old man who regularly worked overtime at Nanya Technology Corp was caused by overwork.
The victim, Hsu Shao-pin (徐紹斌), started working at Nanya in 2006 as an engineer and frequently worked overtime — sometimes as much as 139 hours a month.
Before his death, Hsu had been putting in about 80 hours of overtime each month for half a year.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
His parents found him dead in front of his computer at home on Jan. 11 last year.
Council officials initially refused to recognize the case as death from overwork because even though a forensics analysis found that Hsu died of cardiogenic shock, it said his death was unrelated to his occupation.
In its announcement yesterday, the council said its initial assessment was wrong and that Hsu’s death should have been categorized as death from overwork.
The decision was welcomed by Hsu’s family, who have been fighting their son’s case.
The council said a second investigation of the case showed that Hsu’s sudden death was “strongly correlated” with his working long-term overtime.
Council officials said that in evaluating overwork, the amount of hours is not the only factor and that the committee also looked at whether work conditions caused excessive stress on employee and harmed a worker’s health to the point of developing serious illnesses or even death.
The case first came to the public’s attention in September when Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Huang Sue-ying (黃淑英) accompanied Hsu’s parents at a press conference to claim that Hsu had died of exhaustion, as he did not have any previous illnesses and was in the prime of his life. They said suddenly dying from heart attack or stroke were classic signs of death from overwork.
Lawmakers and labor activists had long accused the council of turning a blind eye to hazardous work environments and the near impossibility of getting fair compensation for death from overwork under the current system.
Hsu’s case was just one of a series of widely reported confirmed or suspected deaths from overwork, which prompted the council to implement regulations that would recognize death from overwork more easily and set harsher penalties for employers who caused their workers to die from job-related stress.
In accordance with labor regulations, the council said it would now transfer Hsu’s case to the Bureau of Labor Insurance, where the case would be treated as an occupational death. The bureau would provide Hsu’s family with the equivalent of 45 months’ salary in compensation, the council said.
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