[Excerpt translation from Japanese to English provided by Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.]

 “‘Count remote work towards working hours,’ demands family of Mitsubishi Motors employee who committed suicide”, 18 June 2020 Morning Edition (p. 4 spread)

On May 28, [2020] the Mita Labour Standards Inspection Office (Tokyo) determined that the suicide of a male employee at Mitsubishi Motors was an occupational accident caused by excessive overtime. While the authorities determined that the employee had worked 139 hours beyond legal limits in the month prior to his death, they did not recognize the majority of hours he had spent working at home. A representative for his family said, “With employers promoting telework due to Covid-19, time spent working outside of the office should also count towards overtime.”  

...A representative for the deceased’s family searched his laptop and found that he had worked over 153 hours in the month prior to his death—nearly twice the 80 hours a month that is considered the “karoshi line” [the number of hours that is considered to lead to adverse health effects]. In addition, the deceased barely took any vacation days from work and had a string of days where he slept less than five hours.

The labour inspectors ruled that the employee had become depressed due to excessive work hours, which led to suicide. However, authorities did not count approximately 20 hours that he had worked at home towards overtime.

The lawyer representing his family...said, “The labour inspection office isn’t proactive in recognizing hours spent working at home (which may or may not occur at the direction of the employer) towards overtime. As telework spreads, employees may face the problem of working endless hours at home.” Mitsubishi Motors said, “We take the death of an employee seriously.”