Labor authorities have summoned the president of Kansai Electric Power Co. to receive guidance following the overwork-related suicide of a "managerial" employee despite government efforts to rein in excessive work hours, according to informed sources.
The Tsuruga Labor Standard Inspection Office in Fukui Prefecture handed a paper to Kansai Electric President Shigeki Iwane on Jan. 6 ordering the Osaka-based utility to check the work hours of all employees in managerial positions, given that the employee in question, who killed himself last April, held a management post, though it was apparently only nominal in nature.
The employee, a section chief in his 40s, had worked more than 100 hours — sometimes around 200 — of overtime per month before his death trying to complete the process for obtaining regulatory approval to extend the lives of two of the utility's aging reactors in Fukui Prefecture.