Everyone loves a good hack these days. It’s all about efficiency and finding ways to be even more productive. Well, that’s great for things like finding a quicker way to fold your clothes but when it comes to the workplace, the quest for more productivity can be taken a little too far. And by a little, we mean a lot.
See, the aftermath of World War II left Japan in an economic disaster. Shigeru Yoshida, Japan’s prime minister at the time, prioritised rebuilding the economy by getting major corporations to offer their employees lifelong job security.
All the employees had to do was give their loyalty in return. But over time, workplace loyalty has become more of a ‘til death do us part’ type thing. Quite literally.
Surveys have shown that one in three Japanese men between the ages of 30 and 40 work more than 60 hours a week. Overtime is the norm. In fact, it’s not unusual for people to work 80 hours of overtime each week. Oh, did we mention that overtime is unpaid work?
In the mid-1980s, nearly half of all the section chiefs and two-thirds of department chiefs in major companies in Japan were concerned they might DIE from overwork. And they weren’t just being dramatic: death by overwork is so common in Japan there’s an actual term for it: Karoshi.
Heart attacks, strokes, diabetic coma, liver malfunction, you name it. All happening to young, overworked employees in the name of productivity. The first case was reported in 1969 when a 29-year-old man working in the shipping department of Japan's biggest newspaper died of a stroke.
As you can imagine, death by overwork is something the Japanese government wasn’t too keen on investigating. I mean, can work really be the cause of death if the person wasn’t even getting paid for it?!
Weren’t they just volunteering out of genuine loyalty to the company’s values? Who needs to see their children when they could be at work til 3am, right?
Besides, people already waste too much time blowing their noses, walking to the toilet and wiping sweat off their brows! They couldn’t possibly work any less.
But with young employees continuing to drop dead at their desks and families seeking compensation, the Japanese government took some, albeit small, measures to keep their employees happy… and more importantly, alive.
Unfortunately, telling someone they can leave at 3pm on a Friday just means they’ll have a shit tonne more work on Monday. And the employees would probably be terrified of the ramifications if they actually left before midnight.
So is work really worth dying for?
And does death by overwork only occur in Japan or is it a worldwide phenomenon?
Surely there’s a hack or two out there to stop this madness.
SOURCES:
People fought for time off from work, so stop working so much, Fast Company
What Is Karoshi? Behind Japan's 'Death by Overwork' Problem, Business Insider
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0:00:00 - Rod: Even people who do podcasts every damn day, all damn day, need a little holiday. And William and I are taking a little holiday. So every now and then when we take a little break, we give you something delicious from the past.
0:00:11 - Will: We dig it up, we mine it for you. Contextualize. And if you've heard it before, enjoy. Yeah.
0:00:16 - Rod: And if you haven't heard it before, wow, are you in for a treat?
0:00:21 - Will: Listener, you know that the folks here at Wholesome Industries slave for you. We bring you juicy content, deep dives into the rabbit hole of science history as regularly as we can. But occasionally we got to take a pause, take a break, take a holiday, and step away from the grindstone of microphones. But we do that because we don't want to get worked to death. And in this story that Rod told me, a whole lot of know do, and that's a horrible thing.
0:00:57 - Rod: Yeah, and there's no price for guessing which country pioneered it. And they even have their own word for it - karoshi. You know how you probably know this about me? I hate hacks.
0:01:12 - Will: Hacks.
0:01:13 - Rod: And I don't mean like shitty journalists or people who are bad at their jobs. I mean they're annoying.
0:01:18 - Will: You mean life hacks?
0:01:19 - Rod: Life hacks. They drive me crazy.
0:01:20 - Will: You hate life hacks?
0:01:21 - Rod: I hate the whole thing around. I hate the attitude.
0:01:24 - Will: What?
0:01:25 - Rod: Because I think it's a load of.
0:01:26 - Will: Put all of your socks into little balls and then they're easier to find in the drawer.
0:01:30 - Rod: That's not a hack. It's just organizing.
0:01:32 - Will: All right, hang on, hang on. So what are some other hacks?
0:01:35 - Rod: Hacks is cheating. It's like, how can I get all this stuff done that looks like work without doing anything?
0:01:41 - Will: No, how can I do, like, a little shortcut that will actually save me a whole bunch of time?
0:01:47 - Rod: No, it's a shortcut, not a hack.
0:01:49 - Will: Okay? There's a website called I think it's life hacks or something like that. And usually, it's like, how can I use garbage to do stuff?
0:01:57 - Rod: Dress my wound?
0:01:58 - Will: No, stuff like organize your cables behind your TV.
0:02:02 - Rod: That's not a hack.
0:02:03 - Will: What is your definition of a hack?
0:02:05 - Rod: Here it comes. Okay, so because I hate it, it drives me crazy. It really annoys me because all I hear for hack is, how can I do it? Get a bunch of stuff without any effort.
0:02:14 - Will: Okay, fair enough. That sounds bad. Yeah.
0:02:17 - Rod: How do I hack my way through this essay? You do the research and you write it.
0:02:20 - Will: Oh, there's a teacher. Listen to this teacher guy. He's like, I'll have you now. I did my own essays back in my day.
0:02:29 - Rod: We didn't have the internet. I was flicking through the aforementioned internet and I saw an article on Fast Company and it was talking about the cult of busyness.
0:02:39 - Will: Yes.
0:02:40 - Rod: And the Church of Productivity.
0:02:42 - Will: And the church of productivity. You are not a worshiper in the Church of productivity
Rod: I'm not against being productive.
Will: But you don't worship it?
0:02:50 - Rod: No. Well, it depends on what you mean. This is the thing. I think there are naunts to this. So on hacks, it reminded me I mean, you brought this up. It reminded me of the site like Life Hacker. And basically, there's a description of Life Hacker, I'm paraphrasing a constant warm, wet stream of tips and tricks for getting more things done in less time. They might not have said warm, wet stream.
0:03:13 - Will: But is it terrible if you're going to do it anyway? If there are some are you? Well, okay. It's some sort of trick for sorting out your washing into lights and darks more easily. I don't know what that would be other than sorting
0:03:24 - Rod: Go on colour.
0:03:25 - Will: Other than sort use your eyes. I don't know.
0:03:28 - Rod: No, for me, it's like those books that were going around I think it was the late 90s, early 2000’s. Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
0:03:35 - Will: Sure.
0:03:36 - Rod: And I've got habit eight. Don't read the first seven. There's some time saved. What grumpy and old. So they also talk about people like productivity gurus like Tim Ferriss, whose fans basically gulped down infinity tips and tricks on how to completely optimize your life.
0:03:54 - Will: You've got to give me more of these examples that are horrible.
0:03:57 - Rod: Optimize your life. It's the attitude that bothers me. It's more about the tude.
0:04:01 - Will: Okay, so you're saying that there could be one or two examples that would be all right for you?
0:04:06 - Rod: Fuck off. Don't talk to me like that. How dare yeah, there could be, but it depends what it's for. Like it's the attitude. This is what a thing I mean the thing is I think it makes you walk around in a haze of blindness, man. So what I like about these things in the article as well, is if you do get your productivity hacks up, you don't use the extra time to chill out, enjoy yourself.
0:04:23 - Will: No, you do more productivity.
0:04:25 - Rod: Yeah. Produce more.
0:04:26 - Will: Yeah, exactly.
0:04:26 - Rod: So it's the classic what do I do with extra time now that you.
0:04:29 - Will: Have to work as much?
0:04:30 - Rod: I will work more. And they get to the point where many people are so into this kind of hack mode or non-work every time you're not working. It's like a deficiency as opposed to an alternative to work.
0:04:41 - Will: Or actually the goal. the goal of everything to not be working. you need to work so you can eat. But other than that, maybe if you.
0:04:50 - Rod: Maybe you don't have to work all the time sometimes. So the article goes on. They quote another guy, an author in the New Republic, Steve Poole, and he says, look, we even treat sickness as undesirable, but not because it causes distress and discomfort, because it often results in lost productivity. Sickness now is a lost productive
0:05:07 - Will: Yes Sickness stops you from answering emails, which is therefore why we must stop it.
0:05:10 - Rod: Yeah, we must stop being sick because you can't answer emails.
0:05:13 - Will: Yeah, that's the problem.
0:05:14 - Rod: People get so caught up in it, they get obsessed with becoming productively nonproductive. So an example from Life Hacker, they offer you tips like the most efficient ways to meditate, take breaks or take a nap.
0:05:28 - Will: Just asking for a friend. What are the most efficient ways to meditate? Because don't always have enough time.
0:05:35 - Rod: Well, look, here's one of the things. Take the time to meditate. My corporate buddy years ago, he's like, I'm so stressed and I got no time. My God, I'm getting confused. And I said I'm going to tell you the thing that everyone in your position doesn't want to hear. You need to take time out and maybe meditate. And he goes, you're going to laugh at me?
0:05:51 - Will: Why?
0:05:52 - Rod: I don't have time to meditate, man. I can't help you. Yeah, I got no help for you.
0:05:57 - Will: I get it.
0:05:58 - Rod: He's good-humoured about his insane work. So the Fast Company article goes on. It says, okay, if productivity is like a church, its sacramental wine is Soylent.
0:06:08 - Will: What? Oh, yes. Okay. Yes.
0:06:12 - Rod: Have you heard of soil?
0:06:13 - Will: I have heard of it. did we talk about Soylent? We have talked about Soylent. I think you might have brought it up in your cannibalism episode, I think.
0:06:21 - Rod: Sounds like something I'd do.
0:06:22 - Will: I think that was it.
0:06:23 - Rod: So soylent is, quote, the slurry of vitamins, minerals, protein and carbohydrates.
0:06:27 - Will: Nothing is improved by calling it a slurry.
0:06:32 - Rod: There is no, there's the pork ribs, there's the blue-eyed cod.
0:06:37 - Will: You were just talking about before we press the record button. You were talking about Master Chef. And I don't think there is ever, okay for this one, the challenge is to make a slurry.
0:06:46 - Rod: Slurry, but it's got to be inviting. So, yeah, it's a slurry of said ingredients. That the 24-year-old coder, Rob Reinhardt, who invented it, wanted to be a liquid food replacement.
0:06:58 - Will: Again, food invented by coder describes it all.
0:07:02 - Rod: Adrian Chen was an author for Gawker and he described the soylent as a thick, odourless, beige liquid slurry. It tasted slightly sweet and earthy with a strong yeasty aftertaste. It resembles the homemade, non-toxic Playdough you made and sometimes ate as a kid. So it was basically supposed to be a survival product. And the guy who invented it, Reinhardt, said, look, I'm not trying to make something delicious. It's all about efficiency. It's about cost and convenience.
0:07:33 - Rod: Because he would lament, Reinhardt would lament about the time he would waste hours a day allegedly buying and preparing food. But with Soylent, he only had to spend minutes.
0:07:43 - Will: I do like has he transferred from being a gourmet chef at home to just slurry? Because it doesn't take you hours to prepare just bog standard. hours to prepare my fried egg.
0:07:59 - Rod: Reinhardt goes on to say, food is a haven for reactionaries.
0:08:03 - Will: It's like, what the hang on we're reactionaries by enjoying food. You're wasting time on it stuck in our bodies. You reactionary, body-having person.
0:08:12 - Rod: I suppose he's waiting to be uploaded as well.
0:08:14 - Will: Of course he is.
0:08:14 - Rod: So this constant push to work harder wasn't invented by Lifehacker or Tim Ferriss, etc. So modern industrial, corporate folks have been pushing themselves to work harder for decades. So the question is, what happens when we push and push and push and push and push our working selves and who are the ultimate super duper double plus mega work hard champion winners?
0:08:42 - Will: Welcome to The Wholesome Show, a science podcast where we tell stories for you. If you are the kind of person who sits at the back of the class. If you're at the front of the class, stop listening. Listen, but move to the back. That's where people can tell dirty jokes while the lecturer is saying stuff.
0:09:00 - Rod: At the back, you're eating Gourmet duck. At the front, you drink slurry
0:09:02 - Will: Yeah, exactly. You can't eat your Gourmet duck at the front of the lecture theatre.
0:09:07 - Rod: No, at the back of the lecture theatre, you could eat a live duck and it wouldn't matter.
0:09:10 - Will: I still remember, okay, I didn't do well in this stats class. My friends and I would be up the back making sandwiches, not even eating sandwiches.
0:09:19 - Rod: What you got? I'm out of mustard.
0:09:23 - Will: The wholesome show is me, Will Grant.
0:09:25 - Rod: And me, Dr. Roderick Griffin. I will have my food fresh from the farm Lamberts
0:09:30 - Will: and is brought to you by the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science.
0:09:39 - Rod: That's not that far off, actually.
0:09:41 - Will: No. Look, I don't believe we may participate in awareness of the issues of working too hard.
0:09:50 - Rod: I like to think of myself as a participant in awareness. I agree.
0:09:53 - Will: Yeah.
0:09:53 - Rod: I do participate in being aware. So which country?
0:09:57 - Will: Champions. You left me on champions of Working Harder. Yeah.
0:10:03 - Rod: So here you go. I can give you a chance to guess which countries do the most work hours. I'm going to bet before you guess that you won't get any of the top three.
0:10:12 - Will: Are you? Really? Okay. All right. I'm guessing New Zealand, Liechtenstein and damn it, Chad.
0:10:26 - Rod: Holy shit. That's all of them. No. So according to at least OECD data, this is weekly hours and they divided annual hours by 52. So assuming for the purposes of comparison, everyone works 52 week year, which we damn well do not in this country. Oh, indeed we don't, but it's for comparison. So, number one, according to this, Mexico.
0:10:47 - Will: Number one. Mexico, yeah.
0:10:50 - Rod: 41 and a bit hours a week on average.
0:10:53 - Will: So I'm not horrified by that, given that I know that our enterprise bargain agreement allows says we should work 35.
0:11:01 - Rod: But 40 hours week, one day I'm going to reach that.
0:11:04 - Will: But a 40 hours week is sort of the most common form of agreement.
0:11:08 - Rod: Sure.
0:11:09 - Will: So 41 is not terrible. No. Okay, that's better. I thought you were going to say and the Mexicans work 101 hours and then they have to give blood to their employer.
0:11:21 - Rod: Things might get messier than these numbers. Number two Costa Rica.
0:11:26 - Will: Is it really?
0:11:26 - Rod: 41 hours.
0:11:28 - Will: Okay. So the same. So we're going with a bit of a Latin American thing here so far.
0:11:32 - Rod: Until this one. Number three, South Korea.
0:11:35 - Will: Yeah. Okay. That actually might have been in my guess, if I wasn't being silly.
0:11:40 - Rod: Can I guess what your number one was? It would have been you were going to say Japan.
0:11:45 - Will: I was actually going to say Japan and Australia, if I was being serious. Yeah.
0:11:48 - Rod: Everyone wants to say Japan.
0:11:50 - Will: Yeah.
0:11:51 - Rod: So on this table, Japan comes in 21st.
0:11:53 - Will: Okay.
0:11:54 - Rod: Australia, 22nd.
0:11:55 - Will: Although I knew we were close. That's what I knew. I knew Japan and Australia were like that. Our work ethic is basically the same.
0:12:01 - Rod: That's the real win.
0:12:02 - Will: Sorry, Japanese listeners, our work ethic is not the same.
0:12:05 - Rod: No, yours might be. Mine isn't. I guarantee mine isn't. Mine is different. But, see, here's the thing with Japan, and we're going to talk a bit more about them.
0:12:14 - Will: Yeah.
0:12:15 - Rod: The statistics are often misleading because what they don't count, and probably for many of them, but particularly Japan now, is what Japan calls inverted commas air quotes, whatever. Free over time
0:12:27 - Will: Yeah. Okay. And by free, you mean you give it to your boss? Yeah. You could use the word unpaid. Unpaid is more true than free.
0:12:41 - Rod: Both from the boss's perspective.
0:12:43 - Will: Really? Are you saying that there is overtime that is not counted in those hours?
0:12:47 - Rod: There one or 2 hours.
0:12:49 - Will: Okay.
0:12:49 - Rod: Every minute. So there are other tallies, unlike the OECD one, that says at least one in three men between the ages of 30 and 40 work more than 60 hours a week. Wow. At least half of them say they get no overtime. Factory workers often arrive early and stay late, and they don't get paid. Training at weekends is often uncompensated. So that's cool. That's a generalisation. So let's track that for a moment.
0:13:13 - Rod: In the mid-1980s, around 7 million people, it's about 5% of the country's population in Japan were doing more than 60 hours of work weeks. Let's go to 1989. Nearly half of all the section chiefs and two-thirds of department chiefs in major companies were concerned they might die from overwork.
0:13:32 - Will: Oh, damn. Nearly half were concerned they might die? Yeah.
0:13:37 - Rod: And that's the section chiefs. Two-thirds of department chiefs.
0:13:40 - Will: Oh, my God.
0:13:43 - Rod: It makes you win.
0:13:43 - Will: I think it's horrible for anyone to be concerned that they might die from overwork.
0:13:49 - Rod: And imagine your performance review.Any concerns? I'm worried I might die. From what?
0:13:52 - Will: The job.
0:13:53 - Rod: So, in 2016, there was a report that said it's not uncommon for young employees in Japan to work long hours. We know this bosses expect young employees still working their way up the corporate ladder to arrive early and leave late, often late into the night. For example, Takahiro Onuki, he's a 31-year-old salesman. He would often arrive, or does often arrive at 08:00 A.m. And leaves at midnight.
0:14:12 - Will: He leaves at midnight
0:14:14 - Rod: And he only sees his wife on the weekends. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. And this is the same for countless other Japanese employees, many of who work white-collar jobs in very rigid hierarchies. And advancement is earned through backbreaking effort. People very rarely leave their jobs because finding a new one means you start from scratch. It's unusual to be moved across that level.
0:14:35 - Will: Yeah. You're back at the bottom.
0:14:36 - Rod: So you got a generation devoted to working like crazy and they have to look like they're devoted to their work. The best way to show that is to be there a shitload. So how far will they take it?
0:14:47 - Will: No.
0:14:47 - Rod: Welcome to the story.
0:14:48 - Will: No.
0:14:53 - Rod: 2002, 30-year-old Kenichi Uchino collapsed at work at 04:00 A.m. He died. He had put in more than 80 hours of overtime every month for the six months preceding his death.
0:15:06 - Will: 80. 80 hours.
0:15:07 - Rod: Overtime.
0:15:07 - Will: Overtime.
0:15:08 - Rod: So at least 20 hours a week for six months solid.
0:15:11 - Will: Yeah. Okay.
0:15:13 - Rod: In the week leading up to his death, his wife said the moment when I said he said to his wife, sorry. The moment I'm happiest is when I can sleep.
0:15:21 - Will: Of course it is.
0:15:22 - Rod: He had, of course, two children. One age one. One age three.
0:15:25 - Will: Jesus. And how many hours has he actually seen those children?
0:15:29 - Rod: I think pretty much never. It would have to have been pretty much never.
0:15:32 - Will: I mean, if he's working those hours in that lead-up point oh my God. Yeah.
0:15:36 - Rod: Sounds horrific. So Uchino. Sorry, Mr. Uchino. Uchino's was a quality control manager and a third-generation employee of Toyota.
0:15:44 - Will: Okay. Wow. Of Toyota. Okay. If we were going to go corporate cultures, I would have guessed some would be more modern and progressive and some would be less, but I would have thought Toyota would be okay. All right.
0:15:56 - Rod: They're not that unmodern. So he's a quality control manager. When he wasn't on the production line, he was constantly training workers, going to meetings and writing reports. Toyota treated almost all of that time, that extra stuff, as voluntary and unpaid.
0:16:12 - Will: Oh my God.
0:16:14 - Rod: So did the Toyota Labor Standards Inspection office, which is part of the labour ministry.
0:16:19 - Will: Hang on. The Toyota Labor Standards Inspection office. They had their own special
0:16:24 - Rod: Yeah I don’t know how that works.
0:16:25 - Will: They had their own special labour standards Inspection Office. That was part of the government? Yeah.
0:16:30 - Rod: I think that's fine.
0:16:31 - Will: That seems a little bit close.
0:16:32 - Rod: I don't see a problem.
0:16:35 - Will: Independence might be useful here.
0:16:38 - Rod: I don't know what you're talking about. It's perfectly fine. It's perfectly fine. So they were basically, in essence, arguing that it was not their fault that he did all this work because he did it himself.
0:16:46 - Will: He volunteered.
0:16:47 - Rod: We weren't paying him that's because he was volunteering.
0:16:50 - Will: He loved it so much. Yep.
0:16:52 - Rod: So this is 2002, but on November 30, 2007, the Nagoya District Court ruled that the long hours were an integral part of his job. So that means they accepted his wife Hiroko's claim that Kanichi, or Mr. Uchino, had experienced what they call karoshi, which is a Japanese word that literally translates as death by overwork.
0:17:14 - Will: If we were going to bring in a word from a different culture and we do that all the time in English, I'm sure we've got tsunami being a great Japanese word. Karoshi. Death from overwork would be a word that we could incorporate. And I'm going to learn you, too, listener. Karoshi. Karoshi.
0:17:30 - Rod: And it might be a long a. it might be karoshi.
0:17:32 - Will: Karoshi. Okay.
0:17:33 - Rod: Anyway. 2013, an International Labor Organization article wrote about Karoshi. Here are four typical cases that they mentioned.
0:17:43 - Will: Four typical cases. Okay.
0:17:44 - Rod: Mr A. So he fudged out the name. Mr A worked at a major snack food processing company for as much as 110 hours a week. Not a month. A week.
0:17:54 - Will: A hundred and ten. How many hours are there in a week?
0:17:57 - Rod: Not much more than that.
0:18:00 - Will: No one could possibly do that. 164.
0:18:05 - Rod: Yeah, there you go. So that's a lot.
0:18:08 - Will: 110 out of 164. Yeah.
0:18:10 - Rod: That's quite a bit.
0:18:11 - Will: Yeah.
0:18:12 - Rod: He died from a heart attack at the age of 34.
0:18:15 - Will: Whoa. I kind of feel that heart attack and anyone below the age, I think forty s and above. You're allowed. Not it's not good.
0:18:24 - Rod: Still dodgy.
0:18:25 - Will: But in your 30s, you should be.
0:18:26 - Rod: I think you need to be at least in mid-50s, you go, oh, fuck, that's a bit much. But less than that, no.
0:18:33 - Will: Ugh.
0:18:34 - Rod: His death was also recognized as work-related. He would work more than 3000 hours a year, which, if you divide that by 52, is about 58 hours a week. If you worked every week.
0:18:44 - Will: And he's also in charge of passengers. Yeah. Lives. Snack foods. I feel sorry for Mr A. It's horrendous.
0:18:54 - Rod: Look at you, remembering his name. That's respect.
0:18:55 - Will: I know. But worst comes to worst, you get some biscuits wrong. Yeah. Whereas Mr B, I feel like you might be having a few micro sleeps on the job there that might turn people into biscuits.
0:19:09 - Rod: So he did that amount yeah. 58 hours a week. Over a 52 hours week. He did not have a day off in the 15 days before he had a stroke at the age of 37.
0:19:18 - Will: Stroke at 30.
0:19:19 - Rod: At the age of 37. Obviously terminal. Mr C worked in a large printing company in Tokyo.
0:19:29 - Will: I was going to say cat food. Cars.
0:19:32 - Rod: Cat food's fine. He worked 4320 hours a year. So it's about 83 hours a week if you divide it over 52 weeks.
0:19:40 - Will: Okay.
0:19:41 - Rod: Including night work. He died from a stroke at the age of 58. His widow did receive workers' compensation a mere 14 years after he died.
0:19:50 - Will: 14? Yeah, sure. You got to process the paperwork properly.
0:19:54 - Rod: Well, you've got to be precise. And the writing system is very complex.
0:19:58 - Will: It is.
0:19:59 - Rod: Miss D. So there was one lady, 22-year-old nurse, died from a heart attack. Yeah, 22. Died from a heart attack after 34 hours of continuous duty at least five times a month.
0:20:11 - Will: Holy shit.
0:20:12 - Rod: So at least five times she died.
0:20:13 - Will: From a heart attack five times a month.
0:20:14 - Rod: Yeah, I know. She's fucking determined.
0:20:16 - Will: 34 hours of continuous duty at least.
0:20:19 - Rod: Five times a month. She would do at least a 34 hour solid lump, plus, obviously, probably the standard 14 hours.
0:20:25 - Will: I wonder, I mean, are these all people that literally died in the job? Because I wonder how many are dying soon after. You know, that it's the car crashes on the way home. And the stakes when you take the.
0:20:36 - Rod: And this is where it gets messy. This is where Karoshi gets messy. So there's quite a history to it. So the first case, the actual first case of Karoshi was reported in 1969.
0:20:45 - Will: Okay.
0:20:45 - Rod: So it went back a long way. So a dude died of a stroke. He was 29. He was in the shipping department of Japan's biggest newspaper, which I forgot the name of. The case was initially called back then 69 occupational sudden death. It's fine. Doesn't sound as romantic as Karoshi.
0:21:02 - Will: Yeah, but it sounds like the sudden death sounds a little bit like spontaneous human combustion to me. Does change sudden to spontaneous.
0:21:09 - Rod: But death is like that, though. 1 minute spontaneous, and then you're not alive.
0:21:13 - Will: Yeah, that's true.
0:21:14 - Rod: So he had shift work, an increased workload. He had excessive overwork in spite of his ill health before the stroke, they were finally recognized by the worker's compensation bureau as the causes of death. It took five years for his family to get compensation. So that was the first case that was retrospectively acknowledged as karoshi. During the 70s, there'd been no reports of karoshi deaths in Western industrialized countries because everyone was focused on this whole type A thing. Type A personality.
0:21:41 - Will: What is that?
0:21:42 - Rod: So, you know, type a is where you basically you're really fast. You're always trying to achieve. You're very outspoken. You do everything clickety click. And it was coke. Yeah, you're on coke, but without needing the coke. So type A personalities are super motivated, super driven. It tends to be, at least as it was researched, associated with high blood pressure, all the classics, and it was always in the West, associated with managers and up-and-comers and senior people doing the business, doing the Wall Street, blah, blah, blah.
0:22:08 - Rod: So the Japanese saw it through the research literature and went, oh, that's interesting, but we don't really think that because we don't think it's related, because comparatively few of the people who got karoshi were executives or managers in 19
0:22:20 - Will: tapping lower down in the yeah, it was everyday folks.
0:22:22 - Rod: So it was people who were shift workers, drivers, newspaper, television workers, construction workers, and sales dudes.
0:22:28 - Will: Yeah.
0:22:29 - Rod: So they're like, okay, they're not the same as these type A folks from the west, so it's something else. But it wasn't until the pressure from the victim's wives and colleagues of the victims who started to push physicians to investigate it that they started to MMM, there's something else going on here. You don't have to be an executive. Which begs the question, how do you decide it's karoshi?
0:22:50 - Will: I don't know. If you'll work a lot, is that it?
0:22:53 - Rod: Yeah, that's it. He died. He's 98. He died because he worked a lot.
0:22:56 - Will: There you go.
0:22:59 - Rod: So medical causes of karoshi death tend to be, on average, generally heart attack and stroke.
0:23:04 - Will: Yeah.
0:23:04 - Rod: Of course, cerebral haemorrhage, thromboses, and other infarctions myocardial infarction heart failure are very popular. And it was not until 1987 that the Ministry of labor started to publish statistics on karoshi. In the 90s, late 90s, there was this big report, and I read it. It was kind of scholarly.
0:23:22 - Will: Look at you. I know you read a Japanese government report from the 1990s.
0:23:25 - Rod: In English, though, I mean, I'm good, but so they said, look, there are no epidemiologically sound estimates of the prevalence of death from karoshi. It's very hard to measure. So there were only a few recorded up until the late 1990s. But the critics reckon the number of people the ministry compensates for these deaths, and up until then, it was 20 to 60 a year. 20 to 60 a year were compensated.
0:23:49 - Will: Japan's a big country.
0:23:50 - Rod: Yeah. I'm thinking it's at least 25 to 70. So they're saying it's very hard to be sure who was getting compensated, whether they were actually suffering from it, et cetera. The overall number of deaths related to heart diseases, et cetera, in the 20 to 59 age group is, like, 35,000 a year.
0:24:07 - Will: Yeah.
0:24:08 - Rod: So 20 to 60 is a fairly.
0:24:09 - Will: Large that's a lot more.
0:24:12 - Rod: So the estimates are that roughly a third of those are probably work-related.
0:24:15 - Will: Yeah. Okay.
0:24:15 - Rod: So the Japanese government was reluctant not only to even conduct an investigation, of course, because they were particularly reluctant to compensate for it, so they were in a hurry. So the compensation policy, as a rule, is based on the notion of accidental death.
0:24:31 - Will: Accidental death, sure. But can't you be compensated for some sort of deliberate death, too?
0:24:37 - Rod: My boss shot me. It's not a work thing. You're an asshole. And you are. So the problem is that obscures the health consequences of long-term exposures to situations that are a normal part of.
0:24:51 - Will: Accidental death is like you accidentally walked into the newspaper printing machine. Yeah. That sounds like an accident. It's bad. And there should have been those yellow lines around it that stopped you from.
0:25:00 - Rod: Doing it, which they do.
0:25:01 - Will: Yes, but not the same as you worked really hard, therefore it's an accident. It can't really be an accident if.
0:25:07 - Rod: that's kind of what they're angling for. It's very difficult to prove an accidental death in the case of these sorts.
0:25:12 - Will: Of no, that was our deliberate no, not at all. That was deliberate.
0:25:16 - Rod: And also he wasn't working. He was volunteering.
0:25:18 - Will: Yes, indeed.
0:25:19 - Rod: That was unpaid. So the Ministry of labour asks workers if they want to make a complaint. They have to prove that the karoshi victim was engaged in extremely burdensome work or was injured in an accident, that the event had greatly exceeded the normal workload, or the person had greatly exceeded the normal workload just before, at least on the same day as their heart attack, stroke or whatever.
0:25:40 - Will: Okay. Can't have a heart attack on an easy day. Like if you've done 400,000 hours in the week before, but then you have a day off. And then, you know, there is almost.
0:25:50 - Rod: Literally that almost literally this source, I love it. The Ministry of Labor's confidential manual. Not the public manual.
0:26:00 - Will: This sounds like Karl Marx. Karl Marx is like, I know, I know. They got in there. They got the confidential manual.
0:26:06 - Rod: I was right.
0:26:08 - Will: Brutalize the workers or something like that.
0:26:11 - Rod: Almost. So it says here overwork could be the cause of death only if the worker was engaged continuously for 24 hours just before death or worked at least 16 hours a day for seven consecutive days before the death. And pertinent to what you just said. Also, just one day off during the week prior to collapse disqualifies the karoshi death.
0:26:32 - Will: Oh, my God.
0:26:32 - Rod: Compensation.
0:26:33 - Will: You got to actually be overworked one day. Yeah. It's not overworking if they had one.
0:26:39 - Rod: Day off, even though they've been insane for the days before. No, it doesn't cover so of course, karoshi is often considered to be a socially constructed disease.
0:26:46 - Will: It's a social well, it's not even a disease. Yes, there's a sociocultural construct that is making people work that much, but it's not actually a disease in that sense. It's people working too much and then suddenly dying because they work too much from other things.
0:27:01 - Rod: Multiple causes. But this is how it's being talked about. I'm just reflecting the literature.
0:27:06 - Will: You may come to this, but I would assume that karoshi can happen in other cultures.
0:27:11 - Rod: Yeah, we'll come to that.
0:27:12 - Will: Yeah. There you go.
0:27:13 - Rod: God, you're good.
0:27:14 - Will: I know, I know. It's almost like it's not culturally bound. It's capitalism bound.
0:27:19 - Rod: Fuck you talking about capitalism.
0:27:21 - Will: Capitalism. I told you. Karl Marx was going to tell us the secrets.
0:27:24 - Rod: Love money. And you are like, more than money. More money.
0:27:28 - Will: Speedboats. Yeah.
0:27:29 - Rod: Which is more money. Platinum plated on a different podcast. Karoshi is often considered wrong, so Japanese scientists have not been able to agree on a single definition. No surprise. What kinds of deaths are pivotal to be involved and whether only deaths should be included in?
0:27:48 - Will: Could be you were just incapacitated by your heart attack. Not enough.
0:27:52 - Rod: You're not dead. Can't be karoshi because karoshi means worked self to death mate. So Karoshi is argued it can also include deaths related to delayed medical treatment because you don't have enough free time to see a doctor, yeah, okay.
0:28:08 - Will: And of course, yeah, you've got a case of worms and they're literally the worms, they're coming out your navel and you can see the worms crawling under your legs.
0:28:18 - Rod: But you've got a bus to drive.
0:28:19 - Will: But you got a bus to drive and you go you got no time to see a doctor
0:28:22 - Rod: So the argument is that should be also karoshi.
0:28:26 - Will: Of course it is.
0:28:27 - Rod: That's so horrible and also far less amusingly. Suicides are attributed to overwork.
0:28:31 - Will: Yes. Why did you say that? I was still amused at the other thing.
0:28:36 - Rod: threw you under that bus. The guy with the worms. So some karoshi victims have died due to, according to certain positions, diabetic coma, rupture of the oesophagal vein related to liver malfunction, peptic ulcers, bronchial, asthma, and on and on and on it goes. So obvious deaths are probably the only clear indicator. And there are so many more. So some researchers say it may be typical, this syndrome, let's call it, of a new class of occupational disorders that the Japanese referred to as Guruka bureau or diseases of rationalization.
0:29:13 - Will: Oh, are we saying you've just been rationalized? You're the cog in the machine?
0:29:18 - Rod: Well, more that rationalization is a shorthand for the ways in which people justify the pressures of the work culture that arose in 20th-century Japan. So this is why we go to the 21st? No, 20th. Well, we're in 21st, but this is how it began. So. Japanese Production Management. JPM. Yeah, I mentioned this before. So case studies indicate the main reason for overwork is rooted in the very nature of JPM itself.
0:29:43 - Rod: So corporate society has been infused with JPM ideology so much that working 24 hours a day is seen as exemplary.
0:29:51 - Will: Of course it is.
0:29:52 - Rod: If not ideal behaviour. Yeah, and I love this quote. The social atmosphere is such that a pharmaceutical company advertised a new beverage in a television commercial with the song, can you fight 24 hours a day for your corporation? The answer is a simple no, I can't. So this whole JPM thing, Japanese production management relates to this concept of kaizen, which is continuous improvement.
0:30:18 - Will: I hope all of these Japanese words will be on the test later.
0:30:21 - Rod: It depends on worker's contributions through things like suggestion programs or small group activities.
0:30:27 - Will: Suggestion programs.
0:30:27 - Rod: Suggestion programs. sounds great. It's inclusive. It's giving people a go. It also talks about small group activities geared to solving problems.
0:30:38 - Will: This is what we give our students in the classroom.
0:30:40 - Rod: Welcome to Kaizen at ANU. The goal of these activities is to get workers to support cost cutting measures, accept job reductions, and participate with management in changing work.
0:30:50 - Will: So we're looking for some suggestions.
0:30:53 - Rod: The realm to get rid of you fucks.
0:30:55 - Will: who should have jobs and who shouldn't have jobs? So any suggestions?
0:30:59 - Rod: Whoever loses the most jobs today is the winner.
0:31:01 - Will: Is it Neville? Is anyone else suggesting Neville?
0:31:04 - Rod: It's always good.
0:31:07 - Will: I was just going to guess a Neville is a generic name here, but I like this.
0:31:10 - Rod: Kaisen involves more than just participating in all this. It encourages workers to treat each other as suppliers and customers or competitors rather than coworkers. How sweet is that? Isn't that sweet?
0:31:24 - Will: I'm hurting already.
0:31:27 - Rod: So JPM also focuses on you'll love this then if you were hurting before, you're going to need ointment after this. It focuses on reducing the cost of labour through the elimination of what they call waste.
0:31:39 - Will: Yeah, sure, I've heard that. I mean, waste is bad, isn't it?
0:31:44 - Rod: So waste is defined in JPM as anything that is not absolutely essential to production. For example, slack time, waiting time, walking time, holidays and vacations.
0:31:57 - Will: Resting time, walking space at workstations, holidays and vacations.
0:32:01 - Rod: Any kind of indirect labour, such as skilled trades. Then maintenance workers, rest times, and bathroom breaks. Time to wipe away sweat.
0:32:09 - Will: Time to wipe away sweat. Are you really losing moments there when you are wiping sweat away? This will be the reason the company failed, that we spent too much time wiping out sweat. That shithead wiped his eye, and let the sweat into your face. That is ridiculous.
0:32:36 - Rod: No, man, that's waste. So how did it all kick in? How did this JPM, I've already forgotten one of these Japanese progress models.
0:32:44 - Will: Can I guess?
0:32:45 - Rod: Sure.
0:32:46 - Will: Combination of capitalism and Japanese culture?
0:32:49 - Rod: Broadly speaking, yes.
0:32:51 - Will: There you go.
0:32:51 - Rod: You're not wrong.
0:32:52 - Will: You're going to tell me the precise answer.
0:32:54 - Rod: I'm going to be pacific about it. So it traced back to the aftermath of World War II, which is pretty much what you said. So during the early fifty s, the Prime Minister at the time, Shigeru Yoshida, made rebuildings Japan’s economy his number one priority. So he got top major corporations and he got them to offer their employees lifelong job security. Asking that all the workers did was repay them with their loyalty.
0:33:19 - Will: Doesn't sound bad. Doesn't sound bad. I mean, there are other ways to do capitalism, but lifelong security is not a terrible thing.
0:33:26 - Rod: And look, particularly not so much these days, but up until not that long ago, the idea that you wouldn't leave the place you first got your job was extremely attractive.
0:33:33 - Will: Oh, totally. That's why you would fight 24/7 for your corporation. Yeah.
0:33:37 - Rod: Because you were always employed.
0:33:38 - Will: No, I get it, I get it.
0:33:40 - Rod: I mean, always employed. So it worked really well because Japan's economy became and is still the third largest in the world. And this is very clearly linked back to Yoshida's efforts.
0:33:50 - Will: Yeah.
0:33:51 - Rod: So 1982, we've moved on from the late fifty s nineteen eighty-two. The first book, which was entitled Karoshi, was published by three doctors and it was the first time the term came up.
0:34:01 - Will: Yep.
0:34:02 - Rod: So 82. They pulled together a bunch of case studies and they were trying to find causality, causal links between the work and the disorders. So the case studies indicated that Kairoshi deaths were associated with long working hours, shift work and irregular work schedules. And most of the people they talked to were doing at least 3000 hours a year, which is at least 58 hours a week before their deaths.
0:34:24 - Rod: At least 58 hours. So you're basically talking, you have to do what, a twelve-hour day, at least five days a week to do that.
0:34:31 - Will: But they're not doing five days a week.
0:34:32 - Rod: No, they're not. No. So in 1988, then a labour force survey said that at least a quarter of the male workers were doing more than 60 hours a week. And that was when a National Defense Council for Victims of Karoshi was established, in 1988 by a bunch of lawyers.
0:34:49 - Will: A National Defense Council.
0:34:50 - Rod: Yeah.
0:34:51 - Will: It's taken it seriously. Yeah.
0:34:52 - Rod: And they set up a Karoshi hotline in all the sort of major cities in the prefecture.
0:34:56 - Will: Have you died of Karoshi? Call him. Give us a ring. Yeah.
0:34:59 - Rod: We're standing by to take you a call and we will offer you legal advice pro bono. in the 1990s. So in 1990, this book was published in English. The title Karoshi When the Corporate Warrior Dies. In the Late 90s, like the source just says, is a big life insurance company that investigated 500 male white-collar workers in top-ranking corporations in Tokyo. Here's what they found. The report showed that 46% of respondents were anxious about their own risk of Karoshi.
0:35:31 - Rod: This fear of the risk increased as they got older. So as you got older, you worked harder and more scared you were going to die from work.
0:35:37 - Will: Yeah. Okay.
0:35:38 - Rod: And the report also showed that family members were even more afraid for the workers than the workers themselves.
0:35:43 - Will: Sure.
0:35:44 - Rod: Which is fucking horrifying.
0:35:45 - Will: Well, yes, and depending on what the family members were, that would be terrifying.
0:35:51 - Rod: Yeah, it's horrifying. We move into the naughty. So we already heard about Mr. Uchino from Toyota, our original Bloke, in 2009. Here's one. Kenji Hamada was an employee at a Tokyo-based security company. He had a devoted young wife and a formidable work ethic. And saying that in the Japanese context kinda makes me scared.
0:36:10 - Will: formidable.
0:36:12 - Rod: His typical week involved 15 hours a day and a gruelling 4-hour commute. 15 hours a day and a 4-hour commute.
0:36:19 - Will: You're not living close enough. I think to move Tokyo is pretty cheap. No, I know. But 2 hours each way, is not uncommon at all.
0:36:31 - Rod: Not uncommon at all. So one day he was found slumped over his desk and his colleagues assumed he was asleep when he hadn't moved for several hours.
0:36:40 - Will: Okay. I thought you were going to say days.
0:36:41 - Rod: No, just hours. They realized he was dead.
0:36:44 - Will: Well, he hadn't answered any emails in that time.
0:36:46 - Rod: Lazy fuck. So he died of a heart attack at 42. This is where it gets more interesting, though. A 31-year-old journalist, Miwa Sado, died of heart failure.
0:36:54 - Will: Female, 31. Yeah.
0:36:57 - Rod: So she apparently logged 159 hours of overtime in the month before she died at her news network at NHK. 159 hours of overtime in a month. Overtime, not work hours. I mean, do you do 159 hours in a month? Divide that by four. It's fair to say if the boss is listening, of course, I do. So that was in 2013, but her death wasn't called Karoshi until October 2017. So female equality. Yeah, they get it, too. Now, in 2016, there was a report examining karoshi cases.
0:37:36 - Rod: Cause of death found that more than 20% of the people in a survey of 10,000 Japanese workers said they worked at least 80 hours of overtime a month.
0:37:45 - Will: Oh, Jesus.
0:37:46 - Rod: 20 hours a week.
0:37:48 - Will: Overtime.
0:37:49 - Rod: Overtime. And it's fair to say, though it didn't say it in this particular source, that might not have been and probably wasn't paid. So in 2016, 24-year-old Matsuri Takahashi worked 105 hours of overtime in a month at her Japanese ad agency. She sorry. She tweeted things like this. It's 04:00 a.m. My body's trembling. I'm going to die. I'm so tired.
0:38:14 - Will: Oh, that's a great addition to Twitter.
0:38:18 - Rod: You can get your feelings out.
0:38:20 - Will: I mean, a lot of people tweet things like, it's 04:00 A.m. My body is tingling. I think I'm going to die, or.
0:38:25 - Rod: I think I'm going to come again, or whatever. So Takahashi jumped off the roof of her office on Christmas Day, 2015, and the director or the president and CEO of that company resigned a month later. So this was under the auspices of talking about preventing karoshi. This started to nudge people. People saw this and went, what the fuck? In a Japanese polite way.
0:38:49 - Will: Yeah.
0:38:50 - Rod: So they come up with ideas like this. So the federal government announced it's a Premium Friday plan. Premium Friday.
0:38:59 - Will: Okay.
0:39:01 - Rod: Effective immediately, workers would get the chance to leave at 03:00 P.m. On the last Friday of each month.
0:39:08 - Will: Fuck. You know what you do when you get the chance to leave? It just does my head. Because, you know, in the Cultural Revolution in Marx, it's like in Communist China. So this was under Mao in the 60s. They said, who has some great ideas of how we can change and fix the revolution to go a bit better? Let a thousand ideas bloom. They let a thousand ideas bloom. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Could you come over here to this place where you get a free speedboat and an execution?
0:39:40 - Will: I kind of feel like
0:39:41 - Rod: Can I have one of those?
0:39:43 - Will: I feel like saying, you have the chance to leave at 03:00 p.m. Once.
0:39:48 - Rod: One Friday a month, you get to leave at 03:00 P.m.. But we will fuck you up if you do.
0:39:51 - Will: Yeah, it really is. Who's going to do it?
0:39:54 - Rod: To be fair, I understand your suspicion.
0:39:56 - Will: You've got to force these things, but.
0:39:57 - Rod: I don't think it happened that way. But what they did find was at least this report I was reading, was only eight months after the program. They didn't see much success, and in part, that was because many companies what a surprise. Yeah, well, our monthly finances aren't looking good. So you just work really hard every other day.
0:40:12 - Will: There you go. And also b. Wow. Everyone wants to work that hard. They're choosing to work way past 03:00 PM
0:40:19 - Rod: Yeah, for free or not. Fuck off. So some companies tried to minimize karoshi by offering breakfasts to those who arrive early. I love the phrase dissuading them from staying too late.
0:40:34 - Will: Oh, is that right? Not persuading them to turn up early?
0:40:38 - Rod: No. Others have let workers take off time if they need it. But experts on Japanese culture I was going to go into the details.
0:40:45 - Will: The only way to fix this the only way to fix this is to stop it. You're not allowed to say no. You're not allowed to. Here's a karoshi equivalent that we have dealt with in Australia. Truck drivers. Truck drivers getting to a place where they go, okay, I can just add an extra couple of hours where I get to my next destination, but obviously adding massive risk to everyone near them. And so you go, Just have a little bit of speed, and I'll just get there. A few more hours, I can just get there. And then they end up working 50, 60 hours a week of driving, and they have crashes. Absolutely goes up. And you just stop it. You just say no.
0:41:23 - Will: You have to log how many hours you're driving. And if your company makes you drive more than that time, they get massive fines, they get kicked out of the business.
0:41:30 - Rod: So you're saying solving it with drugs isn't a solution after all?
0:41:33 - Will: No, I'm saying no. Normally I'm a pro normally?
0:41:37 - Rod: I didn't know you were that concerned.
0:41:38 - Will: Normally I'm drugs and regulation. I'm not drugs or regulation. Drugs and regulation.
0:41:44 - Rod: What do you stand for? Drugs and regulation.
0:41:46 - Will: Yes. No. Government. This is the job of the government.
0:41:50 - Rod: Government big.
0:41:50 - Will: To say stop. The only way to stop this is to say, no, you can choose to work less hours. The point is, they can't choose that.
0:42:00 - Rod: Yeah. Because if you do, there are many unspoken implications, and none of them are shiny. So, yeah. Experts on Japanese culture, both Japanese and non-Japanese, are very skeptical. Do these measures make any difference?
0:42:11 - Will: Indeed.
0:42:12 - Rod: So you asked earlier, non-Japanese karoshi.
0:42:15 - Will: Okay.
0:42:16 - Rod: China apparently loses some 600,000 people a year to what they call Gua, Laosi. My tone is, of course, perfect. 600,000 people a year? Like 1600 people a week.
0:42:25 - Will: I have no idea because China is too big to count.
0:42:29 - Rod: That's true. 1600. There's plenty more where that came from.
0:42:32 - Will: I know that's a very racist thing to say.
0:42:35 - Rod: It's not racist. It's anti people. South Korea the term guarosa again, my accent is flawless, is used to refer to death by overwork. But Korea actually has some of the longest hours in the world, according to the OECD thing. I said it was high. It was third.
0:42:50 - Will: But what that suggests is maybe they're doing better at counting than Japan.
0:42:54 - Rod: Well, yeah. In 2018, South Korean government said, okay, we got to fix this. So they enacted a law cutting standard working hours from 68 hours a week to 52.
0:43:04 - Will: Wait, their standard hours was 68?
0:43:06 - Rod: Yay only 52. Now, this is best. And that's, of course, official not.
0:43:13 - Will: I know.
0:43:14 - Rod: Taiwanese media reported at least one case of Karoshi, which was an engineer. working for the Nanya Technology Company for a few years. He died in front of his computer, which was surrounded by company documents. The prosecution of this case found the engineer died of cardiogenic shock. The parents of the engineer, so young Bloke, said he usually worked between 16 and 19 hours a day. A day?
0:43:43 - Will: Well, if you're working 16 to 19 hours per day, are we including commute in that or not? Because if he's got the four hour commute and you add 19 plus four.
0:43:54 - Rod: Thai is very small, so he could walk to work. And by walk, I mean I don't think so. Limp and insane.
0:43:59 - Will: Taipei is not Tokyo, but it is still a large city.
0:44:02 - Rod: 820 people, plus or minus a couple of million.
0:44:09 - Will: I feel like 19 hours a day. Like, I don't want to add commuting on top of that.
0:44:12 - Rod: I don't want to add anything to that. I just don't want it.
0:44:15 - Will: God, you feel frustrated, though. You do 19 hours a day, and then you got, like, two hour commute, and then you have ten minutes of sleep because, you know, listener, that the invention that we're all hoping for is the instant bed button. No, you never thought this. You're lying on the couch.
0:44:30 - Rod: I'm prepared to listen.
0:44:31 - Will: You're watching the final episode of Loki, and you're like, that was awesome. Cool. It's 11:49.
0:44:37 - Rod: Awesome.
0:44:37 - Will: Time to go to bed. And you press a button that says, oh, I'm in bed. That's so good. I'm in bed.
0:44:41 - Rod: I'm waiting for the invention that cures all diseases.
0:44:44 - Will: No, I don't care about that. Fuck that. I just want to go to bed.
0:44:48 - Rod: I just want to lie down. So just before you think it's all about Asia yes, because it's easy to think that 2013 bank of America Meryl Lynch intern Moritz Earhud was found dead in his shower after working for 72 hours straight.
0:45:06 - Will: Wow. An intern 72 hours straight. How is that even possible?
0:45:10 - Rod: Intern?
0:45:11 - Will: How is that even close to possible?
0:45:13 - Rod: It's okay. They fixed it. So the 21 year old was found to have died from, as they put it, epilepsy. But it was probably triggered by working so hard, according to the inquest. But it's okay because following his death, the bank restricted intern work days to 17 hours. You fucking assholes. You got to be kidding me. Okay, you're only allowed to work 17 hours. Thanks, boss.
0:45:34 - Will: So if you start at 09:00, when does 17 hours take you to? I can't do the maths on, boss.
0:45:40 - Rod: Nine plus five.
0:45:41 - Will: It's midnight.
0:45:42 - Rod: It's more like nine till 02:00 AM
0:45:43 - Will: fucking social scientist.
0:45:46 - Rod: Imagine that as your working hours, your improved working hours. I read that and I spat my drink. It's okay. We're restricting intern working hours to seven.
0:45:59 - Will: Let's assume he was very well paid.
0:46:00 - Rod: As an intern, which it's pretty much endemic in an industry that interns overpaid overpayment of interns, overpaid and underworked a mere 17 hours a day. And also, I mean, it's been commented on in the West. This whole culture of presenteeism has a lot to answer for. A lot to answer for. So to step us back, step us out. Mr Uchino and Toyota, you will remember our dear friend who began this whole story.
0:46:26 - Rod: So Toyota is challenging at the moment, GM as the world's largest car maker, and it's often praised for its efficiency and the flexibility of its workforce.
0:46:34 - Will: I thought they were well ahead already.
0:46:35 - Rod: But anyway, they might be by now. This is a couple of years old, this report. So his wife has a different view of that. She says, look, it's because so many people work free overtime that Toyota reaps profits. I hope some of these profits can be brought back to help employees and their families. That would make Toyota a truly global leader. And in the wake of Ushino's death, the company is promising to prevent karoshi in the future.
0:47:00 - Rod: In the Japanese system, if a death is judged to be karoshi, surviving family members may receive compensation of around 20 grand a year.
0:47:09 - Will: Oh, nice.
0:47:10 - Rod: From the government, that's very nice. And sometimes I like sometimes up to a million dollars from the company will be handed over in damages. So in 1988, deaths that were not designated karoshi, the family gets pretty much nothing. So in 1988, 4% of claims for karoshi compensation were successful. 4% in 88.
0:47:28 - Will: Yeah.
0:47:28 - Rod: By 2005 it was 40%. I've not seen a later number, but Uchino back in 2000 and what was it? Two. His ruling put a lot more pressure on companies to change their ways. So it went somewhere. So I started off saying, fuck hacks. Hacks are garbage. So I've got some of my own. I've got some tips.
0:47:49 - Will: Give me your hacks.
0:47:51 - Rod: So, for starters, this is not only for me, I'm summarizing. Absorbing other people's meaningful work is important to pretty much everyone. That's demonstrable. People give a shit about meaningful activity and labour. We do meaningful work.
0:48:06 - Will: If there was some sort of universal basic income, for example yeah, but many, many people would still want to contribute value to society.
0:48:16 - Rod: Yeah, exactly. And this is the thing I think we conflate without thinking about it. Meaningful work and my job. Yeah, okay, so there's a lot of that. So think about that. This is what I've do. This is personal tip. Ask yourself if I don't do this weird, annoying, overtly, pointless little bureaucratic thing that's come to me, what would actually happen? So when you get a ridiculous bureaucratic request and you think I've got to act on it, think about what would happen. And I've tested this.
0:48:41 - Rod: I think I've spoken to you about this before. So, for example, I took a week where I ignored every what I perceived to be trivial bureaucratic email. I ignored a lot.
0:48:48 - Will: What happened is that the week when fucking thanos snapped, it was fucking. It was you.
0:48:54 - Rod: I literally I went, okay, I'm just going to ignore it. I'm going to see if I get harassed again. And I think I got about 20% 2nd. Hey, have you done this yet?
0:49:03 - Will: I've certainly seen senior academics, senior research and teaching academics, as in like they've got to a senior place, but not necessarily management go, you know what, you can leave every email until they harass you. And if they actually harass you, then there's probably a reason, otherwise it'll get solved on its own.
0:49:25 - Rod: I have tested it and I've tested it more than once and it works.
0:49:29 - Will: However, in our industry, however, is that and this is the cultural problem is that pushing it onto others around you, other members of the wholesome show.
0:49:40 - Rod: It’s fair to say I don't know another one I like. And we've both done this. I mean, people we know have both done this. If you're in a meeting, it's going, no, it's wasting your time. You basically get up and say, sorry, I have to leave in five minutes, and then leave and offer no explanation. No one asks.
0:49:57 - Will: No one ever asks. As many of my colleagues know, I have, as you told me before, massively undiagnosed attention deficit disorder. But I can't handle long, slow I can't handle. And if people are just chatting about the same shit, like they feel like having a chat, no, I'm done. That's how it works.
0:50:20 - Rod: I'm telling you, at least in my industry and a couple of others, you just say, I've got to go in five minutes and then you leave. And you don't say why. I'll add another one. If you're asked by colleagues or indeed bosses or whatever related to such folk, I need you to add this to your infinity to do list. You say to them, I would love to do that. What would you like me to drop? Not enough people do that. Yeah, absolutely, I can do that. But what would you like me to not do so that I can do that?
0:50:46 - Rod: And another one, I've just done this recently. I mean, for all my tough talk only in the last few months. I take my weekend off no matter what. No matter how busy I am, I do not do work on the weekend.
0:50:56 - Will: Look at you.
0:50:57 - Rod: It's fucking gold. It's absolutely so good, because it means if I'm too busy at work, then I go into work and go, look, I've got too much to do and I need to find a way to do it. Or I just drop shit and don't tell anyone. But take the weekend off if you've got a nine to five job like we do. Mostly. Except for now, because we're recording at 02:00 in the morning. Um don't work on the weekend. Just try it. Just try it.
0:51:18 - Will: It's nice that you have gone with the most communist of episodes that we've ever done. But the biggest fight that the labor movement won was for the weekend. It was weekends are an invention of the labor movement. Absolutely. Give us some freaking time back. Yes. There was always the church. The church clawed back a bit from capitalism. They said, you can have Sunday morning to go to church. But other than that but it was the labor movement that said, hey, let's actually have a life.
0:51:51 - Rod: You're allowed, like you actually are allowed. And the ramifications in most jobs, at least in a country like ours, are not appalling.
0:51:58 - Will: There is power in a union. Holy shit. Communion. Yeah. No, that too. There is power in communion and in a union. Look, you only get the world that you fight for. and smell the farts of smell the farts of the world. But fight for what it is that you Canadian.
0:52:21 - Rod: Just think about it. Just ask the questions. That's the thing. I think people just got to ask questions like, oh, my God, I'm really exhausted from my work. Don't accept that. That's normal. Just say, Hang on a minute. Should this be normal? That's my main point, is this, right?
0:52:33 - Will: The wholesome show is brought to you by the Australian National Center for the Public Awareness of Science and possibly Communism. We'd have to take that up with our college if we're going to change names, though.
