Toyota Engineer dies of overwork

A Toyota employee in Japan Died of overworking. This happened about two years ago but the Japanese courts have finally ruled that his family will be allowed to collect benefits from his work insurance. The man was a lead engineer and had to frequently go out of the country on trips. He was regularly working both nights and weekends and put in over 80 hours of overtime last month. These cases have been steadily rising in Japan and while the government is working on improving these conditions, it still happens way too often for comfort.

I was surprised by this actually. I would expect this out of a third world country but not in a country like Japan. I had assumed Japan had adequate labor laws to protect its workers from such things. Even the ruling, which was in the family’s favor, is extremely light. The worker died as a direct result from work and all they can do is collect insurance benefits? If this had happened in the United States, the company would have been sued to kingdom come. There would be giant class-action lawsuits everywhere. I guess the eastern culture, even in a high-tech places like Japan, still values productivity over human life. In a first-world country there should not be any deaths from overworking because of pressure, especially from Toyota, which was recently voted as one of the most admired companies in the world.