Japan sets goals for companies to prevent deaths from overwork | Hacker News Reader

Japan sets goals for companies to prevent deaths from overwork

japantimes.co.jp

55 pointspmoriarty15 comments

If companies here started by respecting Labor law, they would not have to set such goals, because there would not be any karoshi, there would not be wage theft, pension theft, etc. and the economy would be booming with rested Japanese families visiting places all over the country.

It is a little hypocritical of the Japanese government to pretend to be doing something when the ILO treaties regarding labor issues are not even respected.

>10 percent of companies introduce fixed rest hours for employees by 2020

So in other words, they did nothing.

Purely political move to make some PR.

To a large extent, sure, but this kind of norm-signaling is also actually effective as a change-driver in Japan.

For instance, I can't believe how fast Tokyo converted to nonsmoking restaurants. When I got back here in 2008, after a decade in California, literally every restaurant I ever went to in the first 2 years still allowed smoking. But then around 2009 or 2010 it was like "blah blah government initiative to reduce public smoking". Nothing much changed for a while, but fast forward to this year, and — despite eating at least one meal out every day — I haven't experienced that even one time.

A similar thing happened for paternity leave, here, and I witnessed the push for compliance at a previous employer. About a decade ago the government issued some statements like "hmm something something paternity leave", then regulations were issued but with large loopholes for several years to give companies time to come into compliance, and now, maybe not boom! but like (... booooooooooom...) it's basically Germany. You totally can take 18 months of paid paternity leave (not full-salary, but something like $2400 a month, same as women get), and companies are not allowed to refuse you.

So yes, the problem is cultural and not regulatory, as you say in the sibling thread, but at the same time this kind of thing is how the culture starts to change in Japan.

Official statement about problem X, then NHK covers it, then people start to talk about it at lunch, the companies form internal working groups to address it... it takes a long time, but I'd bet lots of companies in Japan are already scheduling manager meetings to talk about how to handle this issue (and yes, probably scheduled after normal business hours without anybody noticing the irony...)

> it's basically Germany. You totally can take 18 months of paid paternity leave (not full-salary, but something like $2400 a month, same as women get), and companies are not allowed to refuse you.

That's actually better than Germany. Parental leave in Germany is 14 months for both parents together, with the additional restriction that each parent can only take 12 months maximum. In practice, most mothers take 12 months off and most fathers take the other 2 months off. I've seen other setups though, like both parents taking 7 months off each.

No smoking in restaurants? Go in Osaka and you will find it very hard, apart from lunch time, to find any restaurant where smoking is banned during meals. And people are just smoking everywhere just like they used to be. It hasnt changed one bit in experience even after 2009, so I would put it as well as a PR move. If you are a non smoker it s almost impossible to go dinner outside at night. Tokyo may have more places because of its sheer size but Tokyo is not Japan.

Yes, that's true; the radical change in smoking environment is only in Tokyo so far. I assume that's because Tokyo is first though, and we will see similar developments in Osaka, Sapporo, etc. over the next 5-10 years... but I guess we'll see.

I've known one U.S. karoshi. Beyond that, I know maybe four or five individuals, myself included, in private and public sector U.S. roles, who have overwork habits: cigarettes and/or coffee, fasting diets, sleeplessness, social isolation, second jobs and volunteer schedules which seem necessary to hold their communities together. Probably all the truckers who die in their 40s or 50s are overwork deaths.

Truckers and office worker overwork deaths are probably among the most absurd, though I don't have figures regarding light industrial factories. The millenary lifestyle of agriculture and correspondence with the bureaucratic authorities is mostly lost, as arable land is commodified into multi-million dollar "lottery property" which renders a life without the risk of overwork death, and with happiness and a modest, long-duration passive income, almost entirely inaccessible to those not born into a family holding that sort of land. I don't know if that's entirely true but I've been doing research and the bootstraps by which I might hoist myself do indeed seem mythical.

Not all citizens are guaranteed a pension or benefits, and cannot necessarily access roles which do. The pensions and their management are a political talking point ("Candidate X will disrupt pensions"), which is outward and openly-admitted evidence of corruption, and where the situation becomes even more troubling.

This is not merely something a company could fix, at least not in the U.S.A..

This made me chuckle. Japan is the most unproductive Asian market of current times, because instead of working to get work done (ie being productive) they work to pretend to get work done. It's somewhat ironic that their culture of faking hard work, is actually killing people from overwork. I'm struggling to believe it.

For me the better mental model is of ant societies, where some percent of the ants don’t do much while other work around the clock. People staying at their desks “for the show” are the “lazy” part, while other employees will do actual crazy hours partly compensating for the others.

More precisely, a lot of overworked people are doing part of the job of their manager who pressures them into doing it.

Also I don’t think that’s a purely japanese perspective, French people’s stereotype is laziness, yet the amount of burned out people is crazy high. And most countries will have their shares of people living a slow life, while others are overworked.

Well, they created a market driven society with low wealth inequality, that's what it looks like. I find it hilarious that people basically end up describing Japan when they list off the things they wish the U.S. or Canada were, but then they complain about the fairly obvious downsides of that.

While people are complaining at the lack of figures, it’s at least an admission by the Government that three is a problem, from here, progress can be made.

The problem is cultural. It's not something you fix by stupid regulations. The fact that people feel obligated to stay long hours because their boss is in the office, and the whole concept of "we are all in this together so we should all suffer together" is a key driver. It's not unique to Japan at all by the way, Korea and some other Asian countries have the same problem, and this is rooted in a long tradition of Confucianism. Japan is the not the West.

> The fact that people feel obligated to stay long hours because their boss is in the office, and the whole concept of "we are all in this together so we should all suffer together" is a key driver.

You see this culture in the US military also, and not just when deployed where it is warranted, at home when there is no reason for it.

"One team one fight"

Yes it’s partially cultural, but it also depends on the company. I work for a company in Tokyo (about 35 - 40 people, 90%+ Japanese). We work 7.5 hour days, go home on time, and can work remotely. (If you speak Japanese and like Python, we’re hiring!)

While the majority of large companies have this old style thinking, I think it will continue to change as the younger people get into positions to effect change.

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