
Japan sets goals for companies to prevent deaths from overwork - pmoriarty
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/05/31/national/japan-sets-goals-companies-prevent-deaths-overwork/
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brandelune
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.

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

So in other words, they did nothing.

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ekianjo
Purely political move to make some PR.

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veidr
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...)

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ekianjo
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.

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veidr
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.

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5DFractalTetris
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..

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developerdanny
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.

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hrktb
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.

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bamboozled
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.

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ekianjo
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.

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Datenstrom
> 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"

