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Death by overwork on rise among Japan's vulnerable workers
- Thread starter Sheytan
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Saucycarpdog
Member
Shocking, but not surprising. There are quite a few industries in Japan that pay almost slave labor wages.
LUFTRAUSER
Banned
Why do they allow their culture to continue to be like this? Doesn't anyone complain or refuse to put up with it?
This is a complex question that research papers have been and will be written on, no easy answers
The usual answer to socially induced mediocrity and suffering: "It can always be worse, so let's work with how it is."
I really don't understand Japan's work culture
How can people accept work conditions like this? Why would a company want conditions and expectations that would assuredly make nearly all your workers miserable? Burning out your employees like this aren't only immoral but also not a very effective or good way to ensure they are doing a good job in the long run either.
How can people accept work conditions like this? Why would a company want conditions and expectations that would assuredly make nearly all your workers miserable? Burning out your employees like this aren't only immoral but also not a very effective or good way to ensure they are doing a good job in the long run either.
To answer this would need so many different sources and would be so long...i can send you my term paper in September if you would like lol..
They don't necessarily. Japan also has cultural groups like NEET and hikikomori which basically flat out refuse to work at all partially in response to this.
industrian
will gently cradle you as time slowly ticks away.
From my experience working in Asia, people are essentially conditioned by long shitty hours at school to accept long shitty hours at work.
As for your latter question, the easiest solution is simply to get another job. Disrupting or opposing an established working culture at a workplace is completely counterproductive.
entremet
Member
I wonder what hikkomori are gonna do whether parents die.
Go_Ly_Dow
Member
How do they survive?
I thought Japan doesn't have the same social security nets like the UK does with unemployment benefits.... (and NHS)?
Vigilant Walrus
Member
"Ganbare"?
is this due to that custom of waiting for the boss to go home first?
The illusion of labor as productivity at twerk, folks. :3c
Yeah, there's plenty of shit like that shown on the internet. Even if a small part of it is then Japan has some serious cultural issues. There's also sleeping on the job being acceptable and even welcomed, employee workout sessions looking like something straight out of grade school and people still using outdated technology like fax machines etc.
Oh yeah, there's also a enormous amount of mandatory drinking parties where employees basically asskiss their superiors. Though i think it's not exclusive to Japan.
SolVanderlyn
Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
Japanese work culture is insane. If you don't have a "good" job, it seems like you're screwed - more so than in the States, anyway. Not to say it's all roses and rainbows over here, but from the outside in, it looks really bad.
Often these people are often considered social embarrassments and sheltered from society by their parents. Same is true of the disabled.
Wasn't there a thread about U.S and life expectancy shrinking because of work for the poor?
The world need to realize working more is not working better. An employee well being and pleasure to work is that much more productivity put into his work.
It's sad especially when it's a well known problem in Japan for any one with a least bit interest in the country. I wonder what's the concensus in Japan on their own work ethic.
The world need to realize working more is not working better. An employee well being and pleasure to work is that much more productivity put into his work.
It's sad especially when it's a well known problem in Japan for any one with a least bit interest in the country. I wonder what's the concensus in Japan on their own work ethic.
This is the same species that thinks humans working is the objective goal of life.
Reason ain't coming in any time soon.
No, they're generally pretty bad about handling disability. Of course there are organizations that try to do more with them but it's still pretty common to "hide" them from society.
Cheesecakebobby
Banned
I have a friend in his late twenties who is essentially a NEET, a very intelligent one who speaks good English, but for whom the idea of going back to work is just too incredibly depressing. He honestly believes he would be driven to suicide. I ran out of advice to give him; the situation is basically as fucked as he believes it is and there's nothing I can tell him except that I have his back.
Frozenprince
Banned
I have multiple friends from University who've become NEET's. The stress and the 16-18 hour days are soul crushing, one who moved to Miyagi (from Kansai) has basically become a vagrant living off meager menial online work to keep from killing himself.
It's a real problem that nobody wants to address, and it's going to get worse before it gets better because their economy is still struggling domestically.
It's a real problem that nobody wants to address, and it's going to get worse before it gets better because their economy is still struggling domestically.
Sakura
Member
Isn't it kind of extreme to jump from working long days to becoming a NEET though?
I wouldn't want to work a 16 hour day either, but I'd still rather work at say a conbini than become a NEET...
Is he wrong, though? Unless he is able to commit to something he values fully, he's caught in the trap of working for money, and money itself is an abstraction. This will never lead to happiness, and assuming otherwise is the first critical mistake many adults make in their lives.
Living solely for a ghost, especially in abusive circumstances, would naturally bring any sane person to suicide. I think the only people who can make it are those who believe in other ghosts like everything has a purpose, temporarily embarrassed millionaires, God's plan, etc.
When you see "what is" of the social network we call society, you can't be anything other than saddened, enraged, and bewildered at how we've ruined so much in such a profound manner.
ClosingADoor
Member
I think flat out refusing to work and provide for yourself is not a good answer to this problem. It is also abusing the society you live in, since you will expect fire fighters and doctors to show up for you in an emergency for example.
You don't have to always do something that you value. It is OK to have a job and just do that only to make the money you need. The fault is to make that job your only thing in live and ignore the other aspects that will make you happy.
Cheesecakebobby
Banned
As I say, the situation isn't really any better than he says it is - he focuses on the negatives sure, but I can't point out any logical flaws in his reasoning that might make him consider things from a different perspective.
He is one of what seems like a minority of young Japanese who reject the current system. He wants to work abroad, but doesn't think he can face the amount of underpaid, stressful work that would be required to amass the funds necessary to leave.
Over the last few days I have seen the latest batch of new workers, happy and full of hope that they can achieve their dreams and change the world. My gf dryly remarks that they will soon face a reality check and we won't see such scenes again for another year.
Cheesecakebobby
Banned
Double post, sorry
What would be a good answer to this problem? Consider the problem of automation and the trends that only continue to promote potential disaster coming. Even if people choose to work, the current climate is diminishing returns and a race to the bottom. It is actually incredibly reasonable for people wanting to check out of this arrangement, for it is filth. Survivability means nothing if the life you live is hollow and wasteful, especially for the primary hours of your day. Settling for less here has fed into this problem.
As for your second paragraph, I have very little to say about it other than just doing whatever for money becomes parasitic living. You end up disempowering your time in the hopes you will have time in the future to do what you value and find meaningful, and if we are to be mindful of the social situation of this very thread, people do not have the time for those things for they must be hamsters on a wheel until death. This is the second most critical mistake a person can make in their lives, and it overlaps with living for money. That's the wombo combo of suffering and misery. Living for money and living for the future is, simply put, the greatest failure at life one can act in.
Unfortunately, human beings are not very good at empowering humanism when they reject social norms. He might as well be waiting for society to collapse there, for that may be his only hope going forward.
It speaks volumes to how bad humankind has ruined this world socially, but it needs to be absorbed fully. Anything sugar coating it doesn't address the core problems here, which is that thought and ideas which innately promote conflict. Japan has it particularly bad because of far more bullshitty social images of status through labor, but it's still mumbo jumbo nonsense.
Laevateinn
Member
Anecdotally, i was recently offered an engineering job in Tokyo where it was implied that it would be common to work after hours and the salary was literally half the position I accepted. I noped right out of there.
Onlinehero
Member
That's insane. All of this is insane. How do unions work in Japan? The goverment and the companies must have access to HR-research showing that this is completely moronic and destructive?
I suppose the obligations for companies to pay for sick leave, rehabilitation and damages would have to be pretty lax for this racket to stay profitable, no? Or do they avoid that entierly with these "non-standard contracts"?
Frozenprince
Banned
They don't.
That, I think, effects pretty much all industries over there. I have a friend working as a teacher in Japan who has had days where there was nothing to do depending on certain events or a lack of students where he had to sit at his desk and look busy for the entire day. Not long hours really, but having to look busy even though you have no work to do is soul-crushing itself.
Something like that. Same friend mentioned above said you never want to be the first one to leave at the end of the day because it means you are lazy and don't care about your work. He gets a pass and can leave at a decent hour because he's a westerner and can't be held to the same standards.
JimmyRustler
Gold Member
I don't get it. How does that fit with a shrinking population? Shouldn't people be getting, you know, MORE money because there is a lack of workers?
You know, while I was reading this I also thought how the situation at school isn't much different in Japan according to what I read, as you are socially expected to do your very best to enter the most known and renowned high school's/universities, even though they may not fit your preferred major so muchmuch.
Combining those two gives me a pretty depressing picture of life in Japan...
But it's a cultural thing, so it won't go away for a while
Combining those two gives me a pretty depressing picture of life in Japan...
But it's a cultural thing, so it won't go away for a while
entremet
Member
I don't.
Unions have already lost much relevance in the US. They're only viable in government jobs (state/federal) and very specific industries like showbiz.
We would rather optimize for the illusion of productivity than actual progress, no matter the cost.
Human beings aren't economic units devoid of context and emotion, and only a sociopath or a willfully deluded fool would think that. I presume most people cling to such antiquated notions out of inertia and a fear of the latent cognitive dissonance tearing them apart, but there are also many sociopaths who know exactly what they are doing and enabling.
Frozenprince
Banned
Plus we have a very, very different cultural identity when it comes to this stuff. We prioritize the self too much to ever end up like this.
Great post. <3
Doesn't prioritizing the self naturally produce egocentricity and dualism? It's why America sucks so much dick, for it's perhaps the leading developing nation focused on the self above all.
ClosingADoor
Member
If we are talking about Japan, shorter work days and more part time work would be a good answer for now. There is zero reason for people having to work 16 hour days, that I fully agree with.
However, I see no wrong in a normal 8 hour work day, and with part time work only 2 or 3 of those every week. You can use the rest of your time for whatever makes you happy. But preferably of course you would find a job that does that already, or at least doesn't make you miserable all the time.
Just checking out of society and work altogether right now doesn't seem too healthy to me, and rather unfair to the rest of the people who do participate and take care of you. It is reasonable to want to work as little as possible for the lifestyle you want, but it is not to have other people pay for it at this moment.
entremet
Member
Everything is about degrees. We're not completely about the self. But being a relatively young and immigrant fueled nation, there is a self selection of individualism. Immigrants are willing to shed old cultural ties and identities unlike those who don't emigrate, that creates a very unique kind of country.
RandomExpletive
Member
Better yet, make a thread (in September)!
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