Mmmm

[kurohinge1]

Super-Salarymen - still providing for their families from beyond the grave:

[SIZE="4"][Another] Japanese Man Dies After Working Excessive Overtime[/SIZE]

TOKYO &#8212]The ruling, which will allow his family to collect benefits from his work insurance[/B], is the most recent in a string of decisions against long working hours in Japan. The country has been struggling to cut down on deaths from overworking, known as "karoshi," which have steadily increased since the Health Ministry first recognized the phenomenon in 1987.

[Behan]

A man working for Fujitsu told me that ambulances showing up at hiw work location were about a daily occurence. Deaths there were not uncommon, either.

[bolt_krank]

Maybe I'm naive - but is it that hard ?
When I worked at a restaurant - we did 75 - 80 hours a week.
With the average work week being 38hrs - that means we were doing over 160 hours of overtime each month. No one got sick...
I realise it's a different field - and he was working hard. But I can't help but think other factors such as diet, tabacco, alcohol and excercise also contributed.

[Mulboyne]

What is ischemic heart disease and how could it kill a Japanese Toyota engineer - or potentially anyone working excessively long hours?
The word ischemia actually means a lack of blood supply. A person who has ischemic heart disease is therefore suffering from less blood getting to the heart. Stress and overwork may be contributing factors to build-up of plaque in or near the heart and increase the risk of heart disease. In some cases, the heart can get enlarged and the heart muscles can be stressed even without a narrowing of the coronary arteries. The bottom line is that ischemic heart disease is a leading killer of men in the United States (not just Japan). Some estimates indicate that at least 50,000 Americans die of it each year. Working long hours and stress can raise the risk of ischemic heart disease. High blood pressure (hypertension), being overweight, too much alcohol, smoking and working rotating shifts, particularly night shifts, can also increase the chances of dying of ischemic heart disease. Even so, it appears that American workers, on average, do not put in the excessively long hours of the average Japanese worker, a country where studies indicate people work far longer than in America and many other countries.

Warning signs of overwork and possible risk factors for ischemic heart disease
Two people can have the exact same job but one may perceive the work to be far less stressful than the other. Worker perception is very important. For those who wonder if they are at risk for ischemic heart disease, simply thinking about whether work seems very hard, tiring or stressful can be a helpful tool. Being familiar with heart attack symptoms is important but regular medical care and evaluation as well as honesty about perceived stress is also vital. The Japanese worker, for instance, was under excessive stress, having to work long hours, travel overseas often and was seen as being under undue hardship due to his working conditions (as noted by his wife).

From here

[Ganma]

Dying to work: Japan Inc.'s foreign trainees

By SIMON SCOTT

Worked to death: At a news conference in Tokyo a year ago, lawyer Shoichi Ibusuki holds up a photo of one of the daughters of Chinese trainee Jiang Xiaodong (in the framed picture right). The cause of Jiang's death in 2008 was recognized as karoshi by the Kashima Labor Standards Inspection Office last month. KYODO PHOTO



JORGE BUSTAMANTE, U.N. SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF MIGRANTS, APRIL 2010

Thirty-one-year-old Jiang Xiaodong died screaming in the night a long way from home.

His two roommates, also young Chinese men who left their homeland for the dream of a better future in wealthy Japan, woke in the early hours of June 6, 2008, to see their coworker and friend dying in his bed. When an ambulance arrived 15 minutes later at the small dorm in Itako City, Ibaraki Prefecture, where the men lived, Jiang was already dead. more...

This particular part caught my eye:

Westerners tend to link Japan's workaholic society today to "typically Japanese" traits such as deference to authority and respect for hierarchy, but Kawahito believes this is not the root cause of the problem.

"Japan's current work system is not part of traditional Japanese culture, but a modern phenomenon which developed in order to catch up with Europe and the U.S.," he said.

[wuchan]

Dying to work: Japan Inc.'s foreign trainees


This particular part caught my eye:

I was talking with an older gentleman a few months back about unions here. He told me that they used to strike quite a lot back in the 60's, maybe some of the old folks on here can confirm this. When I asked "why do they put up with the blatant employee abuse now?" he said "I don't know, sometime in the seventies the unions became weak".

I have always wanted to find out why the Japanese put up with this shit but there is no clear answer. The "we don't like conflict" excuse is bullshit.

[Ganma]

I was talking with an older gentleman a few months back about unions here. He told me that they used to strike quite a lot back in the 60's, maybe some of the old folks on here can confirm this. When I asked "why do they put up with the blatant employee abuse now?" he said "I don't know, sometime in the seventies the unions became weak".

I have always wanted to find out why the Japanese put up with this shit but there is no clear answer. The "we don't like conflict" excuse is bullshit.

This is true. A couple of guys I work with said the same thing. Just like in the West there were also a lot of student demonstrations during the 60s. Apparently, even up until the bubble people didn't work as much as they did since. During the bubble companies got greedy and people went along with it because they were making plenty of money. After the bubble burst things never went back to the way they were.

[Yokohammer]

I remember in the late 60's and early 70's there would be train strikes every year in Tokyo. The trains would simply stop running for a few days in some cases until the wage/conditions dispute was settled.

And, as Ganma mentioned, there were lots of "Zengakuren" student demonstrations that would disrupt the normal flow of things. So the Japanese haven't always been as docile as the seem to be nowadays. They were actually pretty darn vociferous about getting what they wanted back then.

[GomiGirl]

Now people just hire the guys with the cars with big speakers on the roof to sit outside a company office and blast the neighbourhood with a loud, never ending stream of the company "sins" in an effort to shame the company into changing their ways.

I have seen this a few times. It is really annoying. I am sure it is effective though in getting what you want.