Coronavirus and Overwork in Japan
Makoto Iwahashi
AUG 3 2020
Karoshi
The Ministry of Labour, Health and Welfare released its annual record on workplace injury compensation cases on June 26th and it revealed that a record number of workers applied for injuries or illnesses related to overwork in 2019.
A record 936 workers applied for workplace injury compensation, claiming that their brain or heart disease were caused by their workplace conditions. It includes 253 cases in which the workers involved lost their lives.
For mental illnesses caused by workplace conditions, a record 2060 filed their applications, which include 202 cases of suicide (including suicide attempts).
Although the number of application cases has been increasing for the last five years, the number of cases the government determined as workplace related remains steady, which means the “acceptance rate” has been on the decline. For brain and heart disease, in 2015, the government decided 251 cases out of 795 applied should be considered workplace related (37.4%) but it declined to 31.6% in 2019. For mental illness, it declined from 36.1% in 2015 to 32.1% in 2019.
We can assume that the number of application cases are increasing as more workers are aware of the concept of overwork and how it can affect the health of a worker. After Haruki Konno, Posse’s executive director, conceptualized the idea of “black companies” in 2011, workers have become aware of companies which strategically disposes of their employees within a few years in order to maximize profits (Please note that in Japanese it is literally called “black companies” but it could be translated as “evil companies” or “dark companies” for English audience).
Sometimes workers who injure themselves during work or those who lose their family members to karoshi do not instantly recognize that such injuries or deaths are workplace related or that they have the right to apply for compensation. In 2019, police determined that 1949 suicide cases are work related but only 202 applied for the workplace injury compensation program. This illustrates that although Japan sees approximately 150 to 200 karoshi and karojisatsu cases every year, there are hundreds of unreported cases.