TOKYO, July 21 (Xinhua) -- Following the death of a construction worker at the site of the main Tokyo Olympic stadium, his family has requested labor authorities to certify his death as being employment-related, local media reported Friday.
The family said they believe the worker killed himself from overwork. The 23-year old man had died due to his unbearable workload that had seen him exceed 200 hours of overtime per month, the family's lawyer told a press conference Thursday.
"The working schedule was extremely tight. Even though the Olympics is a national event, laborers' lives should not be sacrificed," lawyer Hiroshi Kawahito said.
Construction of the National Stadium for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games had been delayed by almost a year due to the scrapping of an already approved design and ballooning costs, putting undue pressure on the workers to make up for the delay, Kawahito intimated.
Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Yasuhisa Shiozaki said that an investigation is underway at the stadium construction site to investigate other cases of overwork.
"We cannot tolerate any fatalities at construction sites for the Olympics while everyone is working for their success. We will try to cut working hours," Shiozaki said.
The family's lawyer said the deceased had graduated from university and had worked for the construction company since April 2016.
His role of managing ground improvement work at the stadium site in Tokyo began in December of the same year, said Kawahito.
Local media reports said that he first went missing after telling his company he would take leave on March 2. His body was subsequently found on April 15 in Nagano Prefecture in central Japan. A note found nearby his body indicated that he had killed himself, local police said.
The family found that he had worked around 211 hours of overtime one month and 143 hours the next. The labor-management agreement permits a maximum of 80 hours of overtime a month.
The family has applied for compensation from the construction firm claiming that his suicide was due to insufferable depression and other psychological issues directly relating to being overworked.
Taisei Corp., who is heading up the construction of the national stadium said it would instruct the firm responsible for labor management to strictly adhere to the law.
The very real risk of illness and death from working too many hours is prevalent in Japan, with "karoshi" (death from overwork) incidents rarely out of the headlines.
Tadashi Ishii, the CEO of the Dentsu Inc., the fifth-largest advertising agency in the world and the largest in Japan, relinquished his post at the firm to take responsibility for the high-profile suicide on Christmas day in 2015 of one of the agency's young female employees, who had been ludicrously overworked.
In June this year, Japanese top-travel agency H.I.S. Co., Ltd. was referred to prosecutors by labor authorities for allegedly making its employees work illegal amounts of overtime.
According to a health ministry white paper, "work issues" were a contributing factor in 2,159 suicides in 2015, with long hours and intolerable amounts of overtime more than likely behind a number of the preventable deaths.
"The government needs to enforce regulations to reduce working hours. The government has not done much on this topic," Mari Miura, a professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo, said.
