お知らせ
お知らせ
作成日：2025/11/10
Annual campaign for eliminating excessive overwork starts in November


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 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 (death from overwork).

[2] Details of the campaign

As part of the campaign, labor officials exercise intensive supervision for companies suspected to be forcing excessive overwork to employees. Following are the description of target companies and focused areas.

1. Target companies

a) Companies that have been involved in industrial accident compensation claims regarding karoshi that resulted from hard work over a long period of time, etc.; companies where monthly overtime and holiday work apparently exceed 80 hours, according to information sources.

b) Companies suspected to have a particularly high turnover rate or other problems based on consultations or reports received by the labor standards inspection office or Hello Work public employment security office.

2. 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 violation is found, they will provide corrective instruction.
b) Officials investigate if there are unpaid wages and provide corrective instruction as needed.
c) If companies’ work hour management is found inappropriate, they will be instructed to calculate hours correctly.
d) Companies will be instructed to ensure that employees who are working long hours receive a physician’s advice individually and implement measures to maintain their health.


3. Strict enforcement

If the officials discover serious, flagrant law violations, they will send a report to prosecutors and publicize details.

If a company received corrective instruction for a same law violation twice or more during 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 firms.

 

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”

https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/newpage_64204.html

 

 

*The content is based on laws and regulations as of the date of the original article.