October 22, 2016
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2016 October 19 - 25 [LABOR]
Gov’t’s plan to restart NPPs causes suicide from overwork: JCP Takahashi |
In mid-April this year, a section manager of KEPCO in his 40s committed suicide at a hotel in Tokyo. He was in charge of the preparation for the Nuclear Regulation Authority’s inspection of the Takahama nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture. The power company had applied to the watchdog agency for safety checks in order to receive permission to restart the idled reactors and operate the old plant for another 20 years.
People concerned said that the section manager’s working hours had dramatically increased since the beginning of this year. He worked more than 200 hours of overtime in February and also about 100 hours of overtime in April. The government-set standards for recognizing “karoshi” (death from overwork) are 100 hours of overwork a month.
Takahashi pointed to the fact that in accordance with the Abe government’s wishes, the NRA rushed KEPCO into drawing up documents for the safety examination. She pursued the government’s responsibility for the man’s death, noting that this incident occurred as the Abe administration has been moving ahead with its plan to reactivate nuclear reactors across the country. Labor Minister Shiozaki Yasuhisa gave no response to Takahashi, just saying, “I refrain from making a comment on each case.”
The JCP legislator also pointed out that the Labor Ministry issued a notification in 2003 which allows utilities to have employees work overtime beyond the government-set standards if the workers are engaged in duties for NRA inspections. She pushed the ministry to retract the notice, conduct a survey on working hours of NPP-related workers, and make public the survey results as early as possible.
Past related article:
> Labor Ministry okays limit-exceeding extra work if it’s for restart of N-reactors [October 13, 2016]
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