Japan Press Weekly

Tweet

2014 November 26 - December 2 [LABOR]

Bereaved families of workers who died from overwork call for improvement in workers’ compensation process

Akahata Sunday edition

The law to eliminate death from overwork (karoshi) which requires the state to take preventive measures on November 1 came into effect. Government efforts to protect workers from “karoshi” seem to be moving forward. However, bereaved families’ demands for the official recognition of work-related deaths are often dismissed by the labor authorities who automatically apply the government-set standards for recognition.

A “karoshi” lawsuit filed by parents of a male worker at a major trader of mobile phones offers an example.

The 33-year-old worker at the Tokyo-based Hikari Tsushin, Inc. died in February 2010 of cardiac failure. Six months later, his parents submitted a claim for the recognition that their son died due to excessively heavy workloads to a local labor standards inspection office in Tokyo. In preparation for the claims submission, they collected various materials, such as time cards and coworkers’ testimonies.

The materials revealed that for three years before his death, the man worked an average of at least 80 hours of overtime a month. The number of monthly overtime hours sometimes reached 100 hours. The man was assigned to the highly stressful task of dealing with customers’ complaints.

The inspection office, however, disallowed the parents’ claim on the ground that their son’s average monthly overtime in the six months immediately prior to his death fell below the government-set danger line for karoshi which is 80 h/m overtime. The parents, who reside in Osaka, in September 2012 filed a lawsuit with the Osaka District Court, demanding withdrawal of the inspection office’s decision.

The labor ministry in July released data regarding occupational injuries and deaths. The data shows that between 2009 and 2013, 49 families, whose members died of brain and heart diseases caused by excessive overtime, won the official recognition of work-related death through court battles after their claim for work-related compensation was dismissed by local labor law enforcement offices.

A group of bereaved families and their lawyers on November 14 petitioned the labor ministry to improve the process for work-related death recognition. The group urged the ministry to reexamine the standards for recognition and instruct inspection offices to carefully examine case-specific background factors.