The Labour Ministry organizes annual campaign to encourage businesses to reduce excessive overwork from November 1 to 30.
[1] Campaign for eliminating excessive overwork
The campaign is organized annually in November, designated as the Karoshi (death from overwork) Prevention Awareness Month, in line with the Act Promoting Measures to Prevent Death and Injury from Overwork enforced in 2014. The government calls for cooperation of industry associations and labor unions and issues leaflets to encourage efforts to eliminate long working hours or excessive workload, which may lead to karoshi.
[2] Details of the campaign
As part of the campaign, labor officials exercise intensive supervision for companies suspected to be causing excessive overwork. Following are targeted companies and focused points of the supervision.
1. Targeted companies
a) Companies that have been involved in industrial accident compensation claims regarding karoshi, resulting from a long period of hard work, etc.; companies where monthly overtime and holiday work apparently exceed 80 hours, according to information sources.
b) Companies with high turnover rate according to consultations or reports received by the labor standards inspection office or Hello Work public employment security office.
2. Focused check items
a) Officials examine if overtime and holiday work are within the limits of the Labor-Management Agreement on Overtime (the 36 Agreement). If any law violation is found, they will provide corrective instruction.
b) Officials investigate if there are unpaid wages and provide corrective instruction in the case of law violation.
c) If companies’ work hour management is found inappropriate, they will be instructed to understand employees’ work hours correctly.
d) Companies will be instructed to ensure that employees who are working long hours receive advice individually from a physician, while implementing measures to maintain their health.
3. Strict enforcement
If the officials found serious, flagrant law violations, they will send a report on the case to prosecutors and publicize details.
If a company received corrective instruction for the same law violation twice or more in a year, the Hello Work will not accept recruitment request from the company for a certain period. Other job replacement agents or local governments will also be requested to take similar measures against such companies.
Please take this opportunity to review working hours in your organizations and ensure that work hour management is appropriate.
[Reference]
The Labour Ministry, “campaign for eliminating excessive overwork”
https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/roudoukijun/campaign_00004.html
“November is the Karoshi Prevention Awareness Month”
