A draft update to the outline of government measures to stop the deaths and suicides of company employees caused by overwork sets the first numerical target to promote the introduction of a system that guarantees intervals between each day's work — to ensure workers get enough rest on a daily basis. As a measure to reduce the chronically long work hours of many corporate workers, the work-style reform legislation now before the Upper House imposes the first-ever legal limits on the maximum monthly and annual overtime work hours, but sets no limits on the total hours that employees can clock in a day. The legislation does urge employers to try to introduce the work-interval system. But setting a specific target for its introduction will be another step forward in the efforts to end overwork of employees that endanger their health.
The European Union requires its member states to make sure that their workers are given at least 11 hours of uninterrupted rest over each 24-hour period. Families of karōshi (death from overwork) victims and their supporters have called for the broad introduction of such a scheme in Japan as an effective tool to prevent excessively intensive work by many corporate employees.
However, the introduction of such a system remains quite slow in Japan. According to a Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry survey last year, a mere 1.4 percent of companies polled had instituted such a system, with more than 90 percent of the respondents said they neither have plans for or are considering introduction of the system. Roughly 40 percent of the firms that have not launched the system said they do not even know about it.