labor conciliation

Karoshi, that´s the name for death for overwork in Japan. Because of this, and because it´s more usual than it seems to be,  karoshi has been legally recognised in the 80´s in that island.

Actually, in 1988 only 4% of the apllications were accepted as karoshi. In 2005 the same index grew 40%, counting in the 90´s around 10.000 deaths, most of them caused by heart attacks and brain haemorrhage.

When a death is judged karoshi, family members might get a compensation of around USD 20.000 from the state and, in some cases, until 1 million USD from the company. In those cases when death is not karoshi, the family wouldn`t never receive anything.

Today, japanese government is investing on it, putting pressure on companies to pay extra hours, avoiding thorough it endless shifts. In despite of it, we still find cases which show us that it is not a temporary problem but structural. Past 30th november 2007, a japanese judge accepted as karoshi the case of a 30 years old employee who died at work at 4 a.m., after 6 months working more than 80 hours extra a month. Although extra hours in Japan (1.780) are lower than US ones (1.800) and just a bit higher than the german case (1.440),  there is not doubt that the figure is not real and extra hours are not always being counted.

Supporting it, there are important cultural differences between East and West. Pride and sacrifice have been values demanded by the government as the base to turn Japan into an economic power after the Second World War. Obviously, getting this would have been very difficult without it.

But there is not doubt that secondary effects are far away from main objective. From whatever point of view, the karoshi is an important social issue and even makes us question the always over valued japanese productivity. Japan is known as one of world´s most productive countries, but at the expense of what?, and also, is such high productivity real?. I don`t think so. I don´t believe that facts like extra hours or overwork deaths are considered in the average ratios. Then, the information of 1.780 hours would be false.

Another point is the grade of implication that japanese companies get from their employees (until death) comparing to occidental ones (that´s called feeling the colors!). While in Occident, we spend the time thinking how to make proffessionals feel part of the project, in the East is how to avoid it…

In a back blog entrance we have talked about the difference between efficiency and effectiveness. Let´s achieve the efficiency but not at any price. Let´s be imaginative to be able to get them with the proffessionals of our companies, not at the expense of them. Anything different to it, is cheating.