Jay Alabaster, Associated Press WriterManufacturing.Net - July 09, 2008
TOKYO (AP) -- A Japanese labor bureau has ruled that one of Toyota Motor Corp.'s top car engineers died from working too many hours, the latest decision against overwork in Japan, where stoic acceptance of extended overtime has long been the norm.
"In the two months up to his death, he averaged more than 80 hours of overtime per month, the criteria for overwork," an officer at the Aichi Labor Bureau, who asked to remain anonymous because she is not an official spokeswoman, said Wednesday.
The man who died was aged 45 and had been under severe pressure as the lead engineer in developing a hybrid version of Toyota's blockbuster Camry line, said Mikio Mizuno, the lawyer representing his wife. His identity is being withheld at the request of his family, who continue to live in Toyota City where the company is based.
He regularly worked nights and weekends, was frequently sent abroad and was grappling with shipping a model for the influential North American International Auto Show in Detroit when he died of ischemic heart disease in January 2006. His daughter found his body at their home the day before he was to leave for the United States.
The ruling was handed down June 30 and will allow his family to collect benefits from his work insurance, Mizuno said.
In a statement, Toyota offered its condolences and said it would work to improve monitoring of the health of its workers.
It is the most recent in a string of decisions against long working hours in Japan, which is struggling to cut down on deaths from overworking, known as "karoshi." Such deaths have steadily increased since the Health Ministry first recognized the phenomenon in 1987.
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Some things are important, many ironic, others outright frauds, and a few are just so very wrong. Occasionally the original technological goal and downstream results are in hilarious conflict.
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Some things are important, many ironic, others outright frauds, and a few are just so very wrong. Occasionally the original technological goal and downstream results are in hilarious conflict.
Usually "the latest trends" go back fifty to one hundred years in their development and are only new to the uninformed. In most every case, the ancients have truly stolen our inventions!
As far as we know, this is the only place that collects them and lets you celebrate them for yourself. We'd love to hear from you if you have something we've missed!
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