Toyota Employee dies while at work

Now the fact that this man passed away while at work isn't the problem:

Tokyo - A Toyota employee in Japan died of overwork after logging more than 106 hours of overtime in a month, a judge ruled on Friday, reversing a ministry's earlier decision not to pay compensation to his widow.

The Toyota Labour Standards Inspection office, a local branch of Japan's labour ministry, refused to pay the widow the usual compensation for a spouse's work-related death, saying the man had only logged 45 hours of overtime in the month before he died, Japanese media reported.

Source

The problem, for me, is that he died on the job and Toyota don't want to compensate his wife because he didn't work as many hours according to them. BUT, the fact is, he died on the job. Come on Toyota, do the right thing. He didn't die in his sleep, he died at work on Toyota premises.

Perhaps their argument is "tough, he died, there is someone in the Japanese population of 127,433,494 that can take over."

Something was obviously going on. I hope they find the root cause, but I'm sure it was unrelated. I used to work 90+ hour weeks in the trade and racked up nearly 182 overtime hours in one month. Hard work, outside, heavy pipe, walked all distances with material, and an hour drive both ways at that. I really do think the guy's family should recieve some sort of reinbursement for his death while in their hands though. Only seems like the righ thing to do.

Come on, a bit of hard work never killed anyone!

I'm damm sure I won't be taking any chances with that one! No more hard work for me.

It's a sad story, but everyone bucks the kicket sooner or later, right!

It's not working laws that need to change in Japan it's the public's general amount of common sense, like it says in the article: 50% of all paid holiday is never taken!! I don't know about that! Someone is having a laugh!

Can I have some of their paid holiday, I'll go and chill and tell them all about it on a postcard!

MonKey



[edit on 3/12/07 by ChiKeyMonKey]

Oh i agree with both points made here. I have also worked long hours but as i said in my OP, he died on the job, at the company. I am sure even a little help for his wife would have been something.

Who knows if anything further comes of it, though I am sure it will, will they start making them take the public holidays or will it be like most companies - no problem, we don't pay overtime but you better get the work done. And what do we do, work O/T for free cos it's our jobs or rather "incentives" and increases at stake. Kind of between a rock and hard place with that one hey.