SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
An NHK employee died at age 31 after logging 159 hours of overtime and taking just two days off in the month before her death due to heart failure:
Japan has again been forced to confront its work culture after labour inspectors ruled that the death of a 31-year-old employee of the country's public broadcaster, NHK, had been caused by overwork.
Miwa Sado, who worked at the broadcaster's headquarters in Tokyo, logged 159 hours of overtime and took only two days off in the month leading up to her death from heart failure in July 2013.
A labour standards office in Tokyo later attributed her death to karoshi (death from overwork) but her case was only made public by her former employer this week. Sado's death is expected to increase pressure on Japanese authorities to address the large number of deaths attributed to the punishingly long hours expected of many employees.
The article mentions other instances of "karoshi", which can lead to heart failure, stroke, or suicide.
Miwa Sado was a political reporter for Japan's national public broadcaster NHK covering Tokyo and National Diet elections prior to her death. Japan, and particularly Tokyo, has been noted for the apathy of its voters.
Also at CNN and the Asahi Shimbun.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @07:01AM (3 children)
Dont kid yourself.
There are many Japanese who are super productive at much more than 40 hours/week.
How? They dont go home, and family time, watch some tv, relax over dinner, etc.
The 'sensible' ones still get 8 hours of sleep - however they live next to their work, and do very VERY little else.
24 hours - 8 = 16 hours/day
take another two hours for eating and washing = 14 hours a day.
Do that for 6 days/week and you have 72 hours/week, or 32 hours overtime (compared to 40 hours).
Over a standard 4 weeks thats an extra 128 hours..
The problem is this kind of behavior is also demanded from people whos jobs are not improved by additional hours - you just have to be there.
THIS is the broken part - letting people work more where it is productive, and rewarding them, is NOT a bad thing.
Requiring people to work such hours 'just because' is the disaster.
The secret to making those hours useful is a high sense of achievement in your work, and not wasting your live on tv, farcebook, and such.
Unfortunately most corperations, and most managers, do their very best to destroy any sense of achievement...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday October 06 2017, @07:13AM (2 children)
Just watch the documentary [wikipedia.org]
And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.
...
Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.
Hello Peter, whats happening? Ummm, I'm gonna need you to go ahead and come in tomorrow. So if you could be here around 9 that would be great, mmmk... oh oh! and I almost forgot ahh, I'm also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday too, mkay. We ahh lost some people this week and ah, we sorta need to play catch up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday October 06 2017, @08:44AM (1 child)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd4fj9Efl4s [youtube.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday October 06 2017, @11:57AM
I'm afraid you are jumping to conclusion [youtube.com]
Just remember, if you hang in there long enough, good things can happen in this world.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford