The employees are overworked, and to their deaths, and, several YOUNG lives were lost, before this company, and others DID something about it, from the international front, translated…
The graduate from Tokyo University of Japan, Takahashi entered into the biggest advertising agency, Nihondentsu, had to pull in a lot of overtimes, she’d once pulled in over 130 hours a month of overtime a month, which caused her to develop a depressive disorder, and she’d committed suicide within a year of starting to work.
Recently, her case was confirmed to be a “death by overwork”, this was the third case of overwork death at the company. This case had, once more, shed light on the overwork deaths of the younger generations of office workers, and, all of these tragic tales had taught the Japanese people their lessons.
After the twenty-four year-old Takahashi graduated from the literature department of Tokyo University, she’d successfully gotten a job in Nihondentsu’s advertising department. Nihondentsu is a leader in Japanese advertising, took after twenty-five percent of the advertising market, their clients include: Louis Vuitton, Nestea, Bank of Japan, and many other big names, working for the company is a lot of the college graduates’ dreams.
Working for Fifty-Three Hours Overtime Straight is a Normal Thing in the Company
But, Takahashi’s nightmares began, the clocking sheets showed, that she’d once worked continuously for over forty-eight hours nonstop; last year, on the evening of Sunday, October 25, at 7:27 in the evening, she’d worked for fifty-three hours nonstop and until the 28th at noon around 12:42, she’d clocked back out.
The stressful schedule gave her nearly NO time to rest, she’d often slept for just two hours per night. Takahashi’s mother said, “My daughter told her coworkers and friends, that she can only afford to sleep for ten hours per week, and the thing she looked forward to the most every day was sleeping.”
Working Six Days Straight, “I Can’t Feel Anymore, Just Want to Sleep”
Last October, Takahashi wrote on her Twitter, “I can’t feel a thing, I just want to sleep.”, at this time, she’s already, burned out, and had only worked for Nihondentsu for just six months. At the start of November, she was diagnosed with depression, and wrote, “I’d been working on Saturdays AND Sundays now, I really want to die!”, and on Christmas, she’d left the very last e-mail for her mother, said, that life and work became too difficult for her to manage, afterwards, she’d taken the leap off of the lanai of her workers’ dormitory unit, ended her own life. This September, the authorities confirmed that Takahashi was overworked to death, and her case became well-known in the country.
The Japanese Legislation Had No Control Over the No-Restriction Overtime Systems
In 1951, Yoshida Hide, the genius in advertising, the fourth C.E.O. of the company set up the TEN RULES of Work: told the workers to treat work as more important than their lives, the very first rule was: “find something to do, don’t wait to be told what to do”, the fifth rule, “once you’d started striving toward a goal, don’t let ANYTHING, GOD or DEMONS, stop you, and even if you died working to reach that goal, so be it!” All of these rules were used, to train the newly hired workers, and, the managers’ evaluations of workers are seriously affected by these rules.
Toward the claims of how the company had caused the employees to overwork to their deaths, the company is finally doing something: they’d lowered the maximum overtime of seventy hours to just sixty-five, and started October 24, the lights at the office had been turned out by ten in the evening, including the desk lamps too, and, mandated that the employees leave the office at ten in the evening at latest, and prohibited workers from coming into the office from ten in the evening to five in the morning.
overworked, can’t even focus here!!! Not my photograph…
After Takahashi’s mother received compensations for her daughter’s death, she’d said, “Someone tell me, why did my daughter have to die? I truly hoped, that the policies were changed while she was still alive.” The Labor Department of Tokyo searched company’s offices in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Nagoya, to find more evidence of workers being made to do their illegal overtimes.
In 1991, the twenty-four-year-old Nihondentsu worker, Ichiro Oshima committed suicide, he’d worked on average, 147 hours of overtime, and this case was ruled as a death by overwork in Japan’s Highest Court, a very first case that Nihondentsu’s responsible for on the cause of overwork death. The death of a thirty-year-old worker that happened three years ago, was the second case that Nihondetsu is charged with being responsible for.
running this LOSING race with time here! Not my photograph.
This is an alarming thing, because people living in Taiwan are ALSO forced to pull in their overtimes, especially when their work is based off of how they are finished or not, and, for those slower workers, staying ALL night at the office to finish up would be normal, and that’s just not right, and these companies are still, WASTING their human resources, or maybe, they think that their workers are easily replaced, because of their companies’ reputations, everybody is fighting to get in, without knowing, that maybe, once you get in, this, would be, YOUR FINAL stop, because you’d worked, to YOUR deaths!!!
Life, the Obstacle Course 