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.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
RSS