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When Stuart Nomimizu relocated from Birmingham, England, to Tokyo his friends and family in the UK started to worry. Not only did they rarely hear from him, but he seemed to always be at the office from early morning until very late at night. His working hours seemed so extreme, that they didn't always believe he was working as hard as he said.
To convince them, he documented one week of his life as a so-called "salaryman" in Tokyo's financial-services industry and posted it online so they could understand his new lifestyle.
The resulting video went viral on YouTube, racking up more than one million views. It depicts a hectic week in 2015 during the financial sector's busy season — from January to March — when Nomimizu clocked in 78 working hours and 35 sleeping hours between Monday and Saturday (before working another six hours that Sunday, which you don't see in the video).
[...] It got to the point where Nomimizu was putting in so many 80-hour work weeks that he fainted in his apartment one night and came-to right next to a TV stand, which he'd narrowly missed. When the rush period was finally over, he says the entire office got "horrendously sick."
While Nomimizu's excessive workload was somewhat temporary, he says "there are people working for companies in Tokyo that do that sort of workload and have that life day-in, day-out all year long." Indeed, marathon workdays are so entrenched in the culture that there's even a Japanese word, karoshi, that quite literally means "overwork death."
Source: If you want to earn more, work less
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @08:04PM
FTFA
So, the corporations are getting at least 7 hours per week more than they're paying for.
Doesn't sound like "working less" to me.
It still sounds like old-fashioned exploitation of The Working Class by The Capitalist Class.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 16 2017, @08:25PM
What do you mean, salaried people are not paid hourly and 40 hours has nothing to do with anything for them? Fuck The Man! Riot! Riot!
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @09:08PM
You are being frowned at by the ghost of Joe Hill. [marxists.org]
In the process of achieving labor standards that were more fair, workers died. [wikipedia.org]
...then, in time, workers became complacent and let their gains be taken away by Reactionaries.
...with some among The Working Class, $DIETY forbid, coming to side with the Reactionary Ownership Class.
(Apparently, that lot was beaten a bit too much by a parent.) [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 16 2017, @10:48PM
Don't worry, once Uzzard there finishes his stint in Hell he's going to get reborn dirt poor. You fail the quizzes, you get stuck with the practical :D
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 16 2017, @11:18PM
...then, in time, workers became complacent and let their gains be taken away by Reactionaries.
Beware of beliefs where the scapegoat is built into the mythology and ready to use whenever things don't go as expected.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 17 2017, @02:07AM
Exhibit A: Workers who voted for Republicans (and Demoncrats[1]) who then passed Taft-Hartley (The Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 AKA "The Slave-Labor Act"), which gutted the Wagner Act (The National Labor Relations Act of 1935).
[1] Not a misspelling.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 17 2017, @10:09AM
Are you sure it isn't spelled "Demonrats"? Oh, and you misspelled "Republichens"! ;-)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 17 2017, @10:33AM
I think a more relevant observation here is that the power of US labor comes from its pricing power. The growing demand for labor in the latter half of the 19th Century and early part of the 20th Century led to the rise of labor unions. Then foreign labor competition in the latter half of the 20th Century, not Taft-Hartley, is what causes labor unions to collapse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 17 2017, @05:39PM
the latter half of the 20th Century
You have ignored Reaganism/Clintonism.
(This stuff actually started with Nixon's trip to China on behalf of Pepsi.)
Neoliberals undoing proper tariffs[1] through "trade deals" is what caused the economic downward spiral/collapse.
Germany still does tariffs (through value-added taxes) and they currently have the most stable economy on the planet.
[1] ...and, of course, the reason we need those is domestic real estate prices/rents which remain inflated and even continue to inflate.
If the Ownership Class wasn't allowed to constantly jack up the cost of living, things would be more stable.
Trying to "compete on a level playing field" with countries who do not yet have ridiculously overpriced real estate is a losing proposition.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 17 2017, @11:15PM
You have ignored Reaganism/Clintonism.
So one of the precepts of OriginalOwnerism is to add -ism to words? I also find it a big myopic to attempt to villainize the most economically successful US presidents of the last 50 years.
Neoliberals undoing proper tariffs[1] through "trade deals" is what caused the economic downward spiral/collapse.
No tariff is also a proper tariff.
Germany still does tariffs (through value-added taxes) and they currently have the most stable economy on the planet.
How was "stable" measured here? And German stability comes at a cost - such as imposing austerity in Greece in order to protect German banks.
Second, why is stability supposed to be good? You might recall writing about capital-R "Reactionaries" with negative connotations. By definition, a reactionary is a stabilizing force. They are reacting to a change by opposing it.
If the Ownership Class wasn't allowed to constantly jack up the cost of living, things would be more stable.
Such as by imposing tariffs on things you don't like? Stop being part of the "Ownership Class" then.