Japan Press Weekly

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2008 July 16 - 22 [LABOR]

Death of a non-regular restaurant manager recognized as ‘Karoshi’

The Labor Standards Inspection Office in Kasukabe City in Saitama Prefecture recognized the death of a manager of major restaurant chain Skylark as work-related and said that his family can claim work-related accident compensation because he, as a non-regular contract worker, had died from excessive overwork.

It is unusual for a manager, who is on non-regular employment, to deserve workman’s compensation for death from overwork, or Karoshi.

Maesawa Takayuki began working as a part-timer at a Skylark restaurant in 1991, and became a manager in 2006 although he remained a contract worker and the contract would be renewed every year.

Normally he left home at 7:00 a.m. and came home 3:00 a.m. the next day. Despite shouldering heavy responsibility as a manager and working for extraordinarily long hours, his yearly income was only a little more than two million yen after tax.

At the age of 32, he died of a stroke, which was 19 months after he had become a manager.

Records show that for three consecutive months before his death, he worked more than 200 hours of overtime per month.

His mother Emiko, 59, held a news conference on July 17 and said, “It is a bereaved family’s duty to raise our voice to prevent the recurrence of a tragedy.”
- Akahata, July 18, 2008