To eliminate heart-wrenching cases of death and suicide from overwork, it is essential to accelerate work style reforms mainly aimed at correcting the practice of working long hours.
The House of Representatives has started deliberations on bills related to work style reform. Viewing them as its most important legislation, the government is seeking to pass them into law during the current Diet session. These bills can greatly affect workers. Opposition parties should swiftly call off their continued boycott of debates on the bills and return to deliberations.
In tandem with the current situation, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry has released a draft proposal for revising its policy outline aimed at preventing problems such as death induced by overwork. A new policy outline for that purpose will be finalized as early as this summer. The planned revision will be the first of its kind to be made since the current outline was laid down in 2015, based on the law on the promotion of measures for the prevention of overwork-induced deaths and other problems that took effect in 2014.
The draft proposal includes even more concrete measures to deal with the matter, based on the results achieved under the current outline, which mainly utilizes research studies on deaths induced by overwork.
The draft entails a new proposal for spreading and promoting an "interval system" designed to secure a certain length of time between the time workers leave the office and when they go to work, describing this endeavor as a priority task. It also calls for setting numerical targets for such issues as the percentage of places to which the system would be introduced.
The draft reiterates the need to properly grasp the realities of working hours and to shore up guidance and supervision over illegal prolonged work.
Nothing seems new about the draft proposal, as many of its steps overlap the contents of the work style reform-related legislation and emergency measures devised in response to the overwork-induced suicide of a Dentsu Inc. employee. This seems to indicate that the matter has reached a stage in which the question is not "what to do" but how to quickly carry out necessary measures.
Adopt legislation quickly
In fiscal 2016, there were 107 people acknowledged to be victims of work-related accidents after dying of cerebral and cardiac diseases due to excessively heavy work. In addition, 84 people were acknowledged to be victims of work-related accidents in connection with cases of suicide and attempted suicide due to depression and other psychological ailments. Strict requirements are imposed on such acknowledgment, so these cases are said to be the tip of the iceberg.
Despite a declining trend in the percentage of people who work long hours, 15 percent of men in their 30s to 40s are still working 60 hours per week, a figure close to the so-called death-from-overwork line, or even longer. The percentage of paid holidays taken has remained unchanged at somewhat less than 50 percent. Many workers are also troubled by cases in which they are harassed through the abuse of power in the workplace.
To make the new policy outline effective, it is indispensable to adopt the work style reform-related legislation at an early date.
The bills include upper-limit restrictions with penalties regarding hours of overtime, which has been effectively left limitless in the past. The legislation obligates corporations to strive to introduce restrictions under the interval system stated in the draft policy outline. The bills would also make it compulsory to properly ascertain the situation regarding working hours.
They also include a system in which workers would be obliged to take a certain number of paid holidays as part of their company's responsibility.
The opposition parties have opposed the establishment of a system by which to remove some high-salaried specialists from the list of workers covered by restrictions on working hours. The system would encourage deaths from overwork, they have said. If so, they should promote in-depth discussions about what kind of measures should be implemented to protect the lives and health of employees.
Relations with corporate clients who, for example, impose an unreasonable deadline for delivery, are another factor that can encourage excessively heavy work. Society as a whole should make efforts to tackle the problem.
(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, April 29, 2018)
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