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Employers will become exempt from the responsibility of keeping track of employee working hours, so even if someone dies due to overwork, having the case be certified as a work-related death will be nearly impossible. The number of bereaved families who are suffering hopelessly in silence and are left destitute will only grow.

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Emiko Teranishi, representative of the "Zenkoku Karoshi o Kangaeru Kazoku no Kai" (National association of families considering death by overwork). The system to which she was referring is the contentious "high level professional system" in new labor legislation that would see specialists in certain areas with high incomes exempt from upper limits on working hours.

© Mainichi Shimbun

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

9 Comments
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Exactly. Until the laws in place are enforced strictly and the companies heavily fined, nothing will change. This is all on the LDP. Its their duty to fix this.

And what happens when a breadwinner dies of Karoshi? Usually the family becomes destitute. With minimal to no help from the government nor the company that was to blame for the death in the first place.

This is Japan.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

You can have all the laws you want, but until the average Japanese man grows a pair and decides to leave work on time, nothing will ever change.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

You can’t change a person nor a system that doesn’t want to change. That simple. Workers are expendable, move along. A few more lost decades to come.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Once this law comes into effect you can rest assured that the part-time employee handing you your fries will be classified as “a high level professional.”

Just as now some so-called full-time employees are “managers.” Managers of what? The deep-fat fryer.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

This is a complex one.

Many companies basically used a loophole in which they would tell their employees to "go back home", and even to record their time-card as if their already left, but pressure them psychologically to stay, so the law wasn't effective at all in the first place, and it did became a nuisance for companies who were actually trying to let their employees to have a good work-life balance, like, for example, remote working or working without mandatory working hours or things like that, because no matter what, employees would still have to track their "working hours", which would be a pain in the ass, and many companies would just stop giving employees that kind of flexibility because of all of the problems it presented.

Not only that, but just big companies would get actually audited for overwork problems, while the vast majority of companies, which are small and medium size, would just plainly ignore the rule without much problems.

On the other hand, overwork is still a big problem in Japan, but instead of making new rules, why not you start to just really inspect that companies are following the existent rules. Most of the black companies break so many working regulations that it should be easy to even make many civil and even criminal charges against them... but somehow it never happens.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

they would be lucky if I put in 10 good hours a week,,,

Haha! I like your thinking! Something tells me though that it might not work both ways.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

company pays me and does not keep track of my time 

Agree with clippety - that won't work. They're only removing the upper limit. Maybe they'll even manage to raise the lower limit, to rub it in

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Japanese Abe Government who is working for Japan's biggest and greedy economy group "Keidanren".

At First,

Abe Government had behaved as if They reflect Voice of 'National association of families considering death by overwork',and insist "New Working Revolution Law can defend workers".

But now,

Government ignored even Protest from 'National association of families considering death by overwork'.

Abe Government exploit even "Karoushi" Victims' bereaved families,and try to make"New Working Revolution Law" that legalize illegal overwork that is convenient to "Keidanren".

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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