A medical resident worked 207 hours of overtime in a month. His case highlights Japan’s continuing problem with karoshi - death by overwork.
Americans are like, shit what a rookie, I work 250 hours. This makes me a winner!
I remember more than once someone on Reddit bragging about how they worked 90 hours a week. I’m like, dude, I wish I worked 10 hours a week.
I did 135 hour week once as a journalism intern. got fired because I didn’t do 140 (would walk to hotel, sleep 4 hours, wake up, walk back to field office - “wow,” you think, “what war was he covering?” and the answer is the war of an arts festival in northern england).
didn’t go back to journalism after that.
Not just Japan. China has a similar problem but the difference is they’d sooner censor people than allow them to coin a term for ‘death by overworking.’
The term “996” coined in China refers to the idea of working 12-hour shifts from 9am to 9pm six days a week.
Karoushi, 過労死, the wet dream of CEOs everywhere.
Holy shit, that’s roughly 7 hours across 30 days, that’s insane if they were already working 8 hour shifts every normal work day.
Holy shit. 15-18 hour shifts aren’t uncommon at all where I’m from. No wonder we placed well below Japan on work-life balance statistics.
The fact that there are places where people legitimately only work 8 hours a day is kind of mind blowing, thinking about it.
Where do you live if you don’t mind saying? That blows my mind the other way.
I haven’t been able to find much information (in English,anyway) on the labor movement in Japan. The pervasiveness of unpaid overtime and stagnant wages leads me to wonder if it’s moribund?