Japan Press Weekly

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2018 April 4 - 10 [LABOR]

Local labor authority: Renesas subsidiary worker's death is work-related

A local Labor Standards Inspection Office in Yamagata has recognized that the sudden cardiac death of a factory worker of a semiconductor giant Renesas Electronics subsidiary was caused by overwork and should be covered by workers' compensation.

Lawyer of the bereaved family, Nagaoka Katsunori, on April 2 made this public.

Nagaoka said that the man who died in late January 2017 at the age of 38 had worked about 25 hours of overtime the week immediately before his death and had worked a monthly average of 80 overtime hours, which is the government-designated danger line for death from overwork (karoshi), for during the final four months before his death.

The lawyer explained that the local labor enforcement office acknowledged that the worker had been assigned to demanding work resulting in severely accumulated physical and emotional fatigue.

Voicing concern over the government-proposed "workstyle reform" package, he said, "The package will expand the upper limit for overtime hours up to 100 hours a month. The number of karoshi deaths could increase even more."

The bereaved wife released a statement: "My husband worked at a semiconductor production plant which operates 24 hours a day. He had been under a lot of stress in both mind and body as he had had to deal with constant technical problems, tight deadlines, and unreasonable demands. Leaving three children behind, he died in pain." His wife in the statement hopes that his death will be reported widely across Japan to help eradicate karoshi.