Japanese working conditions

A few days ago, I discussed the article, “Unpaid overtime is killing McDonald's managers”, from the website, Japan Today, with my teacher during an English lesson. The article was about “karoshi”, which means death from overwork.

http://japantoday.com/category/commentary/view/unpaid-overtime-is-killing-mcdonalds-managers/

According to the Japanese Labor Standards Law, employees are not supposed to work more than 8 hours a day. However many Japanese companies’ work time is still more than 8 hours, for example 9 to 6, because they don’t count the hour for lunch as work time, whether the employees take a full hour lunch break or not. In the same way, overtime work is a matter of course as well.

About 20 years ago, most Japanese had never thought overwork would kill people because working hard was treated as a virtue in Japan. We － companies, chief executive officers and employees － also believed working very hard was the nature of the Japanese character. Many Japanese worked without realizing that they were working too hard.

In my case, I usually worked from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. or 12 a.m., 6 days a week when I at a company in the music industry even though the company’s working hours were 10 to 7, 5 days a week. Almost all of the employees worked more than 100 hours a month on top of their regular monthly hours, which did not seem surprising to anyone. When the employees were late for work their salaries were cut, but overtime pay was never given to them. Many young workers slept in their sleeping bags on the company’s floor, because they didn’t want to waste any time for sleeping going home and back. While I was working at the company with these co-workers, I started to become numb to the working conditions there.

When I heard the word “karoshi” for the first time I really thought that one of us would be the next victim. Many Japanese might have been feeling just like I was － I would be killed by my company. Then I did a calculation converting my pay into hourly earnings, while looking at my time card. My hourly wage was an unbelievable and laughable figure － IT WAS LESS THAN 200 YEN.

After leaving that company, I still worked more than 8 hours a day, because it was my nature. I couldn’t stop working until I finished the job that I was handling at that time. Basically, I wanted to finish my work as soon as possible in case, be I got some urgent work the next day or became sick. I wanted to be prepared for the next job or coming situation. When I left a job halfway done I thought about it all night. When I had nothing to do or took a day off, I felt guilty. My entire schedule was built around my work. When I look back now, I enjoyed being busy with work. I liked being a hard working person. While I was working I felt I had a reason for living. I think I was a workaholic at that time.

Since “karoshi” became an issue in public, many companies have promoted their employees. The companies gave them higher position titles and base salaries which increased only a little, instead of disapproving their overtime allowance. However, their salaries were mostly formed by the overtime pay. That was why their take-home wages didn’t rise even if they got promotions. Not only that, in the worst case their take-home pay would go down, even though they worked as long as or longer than before.

Now Japanese working conditions are changing. Many Japanese workers are starting to think that overwork is not a virtue. They try to get better working conditions. Nevertheless, many companies still give their employees titles which are only names, and request unpaid overtime work. There are still many workaholics like I was before.

Both the companies and the employees have to think the working conditions over now. If such perverse working situations are not eliminated, unfortunately the same things like in the article, “Unpaid overtime is killing McDonald's managers”, will happen again.