Coronavirus and Overwork in Japan

Makoto Iwahashi 

AUG 3 2020

中文    한국어    日本語 

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. 

Coronavirus exacerbates overwork

So far, Japan has failed to act in time to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The state of emergency was lifted at the end of May but the number of infected cases has increased in July with a record 1464 people contract the virus on August 1st.

The pandemic has affected many workers. Those working in the service sector are affected the most with majority of them losing their jobs or placed on leave without pay. The labor standards act mandates that employers compensate at least 60 percent of missed paychecks but many companies have simply refused to give furlough compensation to their workers.

The coronavirus pandemic has also forced many workers to work overtime. One sector that is most affected is the public sector. In the city of Kyoto, 43 public health center workers were forced to work at least 100 hours of overtime in a month (which means working 250 to 300 hours a month overall) from March to May. One worked 251 hours of overtime. Similar incidents are seen in other public health centers, which handle the coronavirus testing, all over the country. Other essential workers such as doctors, nurses, teachers and care takers are forced to work longer than usual to meet the demand.

However, public health center workers forced to overwork should not be seen as a “natural disaster”. Neoliberal policies to make the public sector “smaller” and “more efficient” have dramatically reduced the number of the centers from 852 in 1992 to just 472 in 2019, a decrease of 45 percent. The overall population has increased during the span meaning one health center worker is responsible for the health of more citizens than ever before. We also know that 53 percent of those working for the Ministry of Labor, Health and Welfare are hired on temporary, fixed contracts which means less pay and benefits as well as unstable employment conditions.

Also as more companies allow workers to work from home, we may see more of teleworking workers forced to put in more hours than before. Working from home on one hand allows workers to avoid being in notoriously packed commuter trains or crowded offices. But on the other hand, since now workers can access the Internet essentially at all times, it could work against workers health.

What labor unions and NGO’s need to do during such an emergency is to organize workers to combat overwork from happening. Many workers wish to work from home to avoid being outside and risk contracting the virus and labor organizations have the power to negotiate on their behalf to demand a strict rule on working time so that working from home does not work against us.