Photo/Illutration The smartwatch used by a Mitsubishi Motors Corp. employee who committed suicide is shown at a June 17 news conference by the man's lawyer and bereaved family. (Suguru Takizawa)

The family of a Mitsubishi Motors Corp. employee who committed suicide has won the fight to have his death officially recognized as “karoshi” (death from overwork).

But the family's lawyer warned that labor investigators' failure to include the man's time spent working at home in the total hours he worked leading up to his death bodes ill for the many people now teleworking due to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

The Mita Labor Standards Inspection Office, in its official certification of the man's death as karoshi, said the suicide by the 47-year-old employee was due to psychological problems triggered by overwork.

However, while the man often took work home at night and during the weekends, the inspection office did not include most of those hours as part of his overtime, according to Hiroshi Kawahito, the lawyer for his family, who has handled numerous karoshi cases.

“There is greater danger from long working hours outside of the office," Kawahito said, touching upon the coronavirus pandemic’s effect on working from home.

“Even if people put in many hours of work at home, there is still the possibility that labor standards inspection offices may not recognize such work as overtime,” he added.

Kawahito and the family held a news conference on June 17 to announce the certification, which was dated May 28.

Mitsubishi Motors on June 17 issued a statement saying it deeply regretted the fact that one of its employees had died.

The man took his own life in February 2019 after developing psychological problems. While he had long worked as an engineer, the employee was given a new position in product planning that he had no experience in from January 2018.

The labor standards inspection office found that in the month before his death the man put in 139 hours of overtime, a sharp increase from previous months. The office concluded that the long hours led to the psychological problems that resulted in his suicide.

Members of the man's family said he had been involved in preparing for the launch of a new car model jointly developed with Nissan Motor Co.

On weeknights, he worked at the company dormitory where he was staying and on weekends when he returned to the family home, the man would often go to a nearby library to work.

The smartwatch he used recorded how little sleep the man had in the month before he developed psychological problems. On 16 days, he got less than five hours of sleep a night and there were also days when he only slept for about two and a half hours.

The company had also designated the man as being in a supervisory position, which meant regulations covering working hours did not apply to him.

As for why the work the man did at home was not counted among his overtime, Kawahito speculated that the labor standards inspection office likely only counted work for which the man’s superior gave clear instructions and for which objective results were available.

Concerns about overtime not being recognized have long been raised by people who had worked from home even before the COVID-19 outbreak.

A 2015 survey by the Japan Institute for Labor Policy and Training of employees asked about the disadvantages of working from home. While 38.3 percent of respondents said it was difficult to clearly delineate between work and other activities, 21.1 percent said the system made it much easier to end up working long hours.

Kawahito said company presidents need to conduct proper labor management to prevent long working hours at home.

(This article was written by Suguru Takizawa and Sawa Okabayashi.)

Related News