Responding to the suicide of Matsuri Takahashi, an employee at the Dentsu Inc. advertising agency on Christmas Day last year, the labor ministry will bolster regulations covering illegal overtime by making it easier to publicize the names of errant companies.
With the new measures to be implemented as early as next month, the ministry is aiming to prevent workers from dying or committing suicide due to overwork, but pundits brand the effort as lukewarm, saying the new rules don't have enough teeth to force changes to Japan's notorious corporate culture of excessively long work hours.
Under the latest measures released Monday, the monthly overtime threshold for the ministry to publicly shame companies will be reduced from the current 100 hours to 80.