In an extremely rare decision, labor standards inspectors recognized the death of a 62-year-old man from a hemorrhagic gastric ulcer as an industrial accident resulting from overwork.

The man, who was rehired as a nonregular worker after his retirement at an electrical facilities installation contractor in Toyama, died at a hospital in December 2021 after he was found collapsed at his home.

He had served as an on-site supervisor for work at TV broadcasters.

The Toyama Labor Standards Office in May said the man developed a gastric ulcer due to long working hours and stress, sources said.

He had put in about 122 hours of overtime in the month before his death and about 113 hours in the preceding month.

Monthly overtime of 100 hours is generally considered a measure for recognizing a work-related accident for brain disease or a heart problem.

Currently, government standards for recognizing industrial accidents, for which compensation is provided, only cover brain diseases, heart problems and mental disorders.

While 2,989 cases of industrial accidents were recognized in these three groups of illnesses between fiscal 2017 and fiscal 2020, only two cases were certified for other ailments.

The man joined the company as an engineer in 1986 and was rehired on a nonregular contract after turning 60 in August 2019, according to his bereaved family and lawyers.

The man’s wife, a nurse, used to cook dishes filled with vegetables for her husband, who was a diabetic. But he was often unable to return home in time for dinner in the months before his death.

She even told her husband to quit his post-retirement job because he was becoming increasingly emaciated from working from early morning to late evening.

“There is no job that a worker should perform by sacrificing his health,” said the widow, who is in her 60s. “If the work was unbearable, I hope he would have escaped from it.”

The company told The Asahi Shimbun that it will refrain from commenting on the issue because it has not confirmed the death was recognized as an industrial accident.

Yoichi Shimada, a professor emeritus at Waseda University and expert on labor laws, said it is significant that a worker’s death was recognized as an industrial accident over a digestive system disease.

He said the government could move to establish industrial accident standards for digestive system diseases.

“For workers rehired after retirement, the instability of their status can be a source of stress,” Shimada said. “The government, as well as companies, need to review whether they have sufficient measures to protect workers.”

The revised law on stabilization of employment of elderly people, which took effect in 2013, obliges companies to give opportunities for employees to work until they turn 65.

The number of workers aged 60 or older was about 14.54 million in 2022, up about 2.6 million from 10 years earlier, according to the internal affairs ministry’s labor force survey.

However, working conditions are not necessarily stable for many elderly persons.

Seventy percent of companies that keep employees on their payrolls until the age of 65 said they rehire them as nonregular employees instead of abolishing or extending the retirement age, according to a labor ministry survey covering 230,000 companies nationwide.

A survey by a government-affiliated institution also found that employees at most companies are responsible for the same type of work even after reaching the retirement age, but their wages are lowered.

The number of people who died or were unable to work for four days or more in industrial accidents rose to about 132,000 in 2022, according to the labor ministry. People aged 60 or older accounted for about 29 percent of them.

Labor ministry officials say the percentage of elderly workers in overall industrial accidents is increasing because of declines in their physical and cognitive functions.

The ministry compiled guidelines to prevent industrial accidents for both companies and workers in 2020.

Tadashi Matsumaru, a lawyer representing the widow, said, “If the government tries to have elderly people actively participate in the workforce, the current circumstances where experienced workers are being driven hard should be improved.”

Matsumaru is a senior representative of the National Defense Counsel for Victims of Karoshi, a group of lawyers working on the issue of deaths from overwork.

(This article was compiled from reports by Shoko Matsuura, Teruaki Sakamoto and Issei Yamamoto.)