Karoshi in Japan

(Presentation in the conference of KSOEM)

Hello my name is Makoto Iwahashi from a labor NGO based in Tokyo called Posse. Today I’d like to talk about karoshi in japan and the role of labor NGOs like us in terms of fighting against karoshi and reducing overwork in Japan. Today I would like to use PowerPoint slides to explain.

The outline of today’s presentation would be to first I’d like to explain what Posse does, and I’d like to show the state of karoshi and overwork in Japan, then the difficulties the victim’s family faces to even receive compensation, and lastly the role of NGOs and labor unions in this situation.

About Posse, it is a not-for-profit established in 2006. It is a group of college students and young workers advocating for workers’ rights. The main work of ours is that we have a worker hotline which provides free legal consultation to workers. It receives 3,000 calls and emails in one year from workers all over Japan who are concerned about overwork (including karoshi), unpaid wages, workplace injuries, and various harassments including sexual harassment among many issues. Last year, we established an English hotline to offer free legal advice to English speaking workers in Japan and also we have a hotline in Chinese as well in order to help migrant workers whom Japan is increasingly accepting.

We are also a founding member of Karoshi Watch in East Asia where we have various reports from NGOs in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, discussing various issues in those three countries.

When I say karoshi and karojisatsu, it became a major social issue in the 1990’s and it is now adopted internationally so the terms karoshi which literally means death from overwork in Japanese and karojisatsu literally means suicide death from overwork. Since they are adopted internationally, we can use these terms to describe exactly what is happening.

“Karoshi” in a narrow sense indicates a death caused brain or heart disease. In a broader meaning, it includes both karoshi in a narrow sense and karojisatsu, so when I say karoshi, it could mean deaths caused by brain and/or heart diseases or it could mean both karoshi and karojisatsu.

This graph compares the percentage of workers working over 49 hours per week in 2019, and you can see in Japan, especially men, 26.3% of men are working around 10 hours of overtime per week. It is second most to South Korea when comparing the six developed countries.

In Japan, there are many karoshi cases and in major internationally known companies like Toyota and Dentsu. We know that there were karoshi cases because the cases became covered by news. To be “officially” recognized as karoshi, the victim‘s family must submit an application to the labor standards office, demanding compensation through workplace injury compensation insurance program. If there’s no application submitted, the government cannot officially recognize the death as work related. After the application is submitted, the government conducts an investigation to determine whether the death (or the disease since the victim may not have passed away) was work related or not just like any other work place injuries. Deaths recognized by the government as work related are considered karoshi, and they would be compensated.

This graph shows the number of workplace injury compensation application cases in brain and heart diseases and mental illnesses. You can see that the number of application cases for brain and heart diseases are basically staying the same. It was 931 in 2007 and 936 in 2019. But if you look at mental illness cases, it was 952 in 2007 but it is more than 2000 in 2019. So you can see mental illness is a big issue in Japan.

The previous graph was on application cases but this graph show actual compensated cases or the cases the government determined officially as work related. You can see in 2019 216 cases of brain and/or heart disease cases were recognized by the government as work related. Among the 216, 86 were death cases. When we compare this graph to the previous graph, 936 applications were submitted and the actual compensated cases were 216. Just because you submit an application does not mean you are compensated and in fact most do not receive compensation.

It is even more of a problem in mental illness cases where the compensated cases were only 509 (88 were death or suicide attempt cases) among 2060 cases. Only a quarter of applications are compensated. This blue line indicates suicide cases where the police, who has to investigate every suicide case on what the reasoning was behind each suicide case, determined work was one of the reasons for the person committing suicide and in 2019 there were 1949 such cases. There have been around 2000 people committing suicide where the police found out that they were work related, but among those 2000 cases only 88 or a bit less than 100 every year are compensated.

There is a huge undercount in these stats and one of the reasons behind is this standard called the karoshi threshold which is what the government uses to determine whether the death is work related or not. In a case of a brain and or heart disease, it is 100 hours of overtime over a one-month period or an average of 80 hours of overtime over a two to six months period. In mental illness, it is 160 hours of overtime over 30 days before experiencing the illness or an average of 100 hours of overtime over a three months period. It is set very high, you have to work more than 16 hours per day to even to qualify to receive compensation. Of course the government also investigates other factors including harassments but working hours is the main factor in determining karoshi.

The difficulties every victims’ families face when applying for compensation are that they are the ones who must provide evidence that the victim was overworking. Many companies do not keep track of accurate working hours data and it is not even mandated by law for companies to keep track of accurate working hours data. What happens is that it creates an incentive for companies not to keep track of accurate data and even if there were accurately kept timesheets, companies regularly refuse to disclose them because the companies are afraid that they would be hold accountable if the death was considered work-related. It is very difficult for the victim’s family to prove as they do not know exactly how long the victim was working. If the victim’s family who cannot ”prove” overwork behind the death it is difficult for them to be compensated. It becomes especially difficult in cases involving harassment, and bullying when the family is not there in the workplace. Many cases, employees who were working with the victim are told by their employer not to speak about the incident and it becomes difficult for the victim’s family to collect information.

Even if the family of the victim thought the death was caused by workplace issues, unless the family submits an application for workplace injury compensation, the death would not be counted as karoshi. Most families do think, at the time of death, that it is work related but many do not know they are eligible to apply for or how to apply for workplace injury compensation. The company usually discourages the victim’s family to apply for compensation by claiming that it was the victim‘s fault. We have seen a company claim that he was eating unhealthy and that was the reason for having a heart attack or he had a heart attack because he was playing too much videogames which deprived him of enough quality sleep. Companies tell these to the victims’ families to prevent them from applying so that they would not be held accountable.

Lastly on what labor NGOs have to do. Karoshi is legal in Japan, it is not a punishable crime. No one is going to be or had ever been arrested from a company for “killing” someone though overwork. Also there was no overtime cap until 2019 so in theory it was possible to make employees work 24 hours 365 days a year. Although the cap is set, it is set at 100 hours of overtime per month which is right at the karoshi threshold. The government is basically saying that employers are allowed to make employees work until there is a chance of employees losing their lives. As labor NGOs helping victims and combating the culture of overwork, we have to help the victim’s family to apply for workplace injury compensation by encouraging them to apply and gathering necessary evidence to “prove” overwork and they should be eligible to receive compensation. Also we have to hold the company accountable and providing compensation for the family since the compensation you receive from the workplace injury compensation scheme is only a part of what the victim’s family should receive. To most victims, it is extremely difficult to stand up against these major companies thus unless NGOs stand up with them cases would be invisible. What we are seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg and it is going to remain as such. Thank you for listening.