Can a company be liable if job-related stress causes a worker to take his own life?

A court in Japan has answered this question with a resounding “hai”—yes, slapping a company with a 100 million yen ($1.09 million) fine for essentially working an employee to death.

The 33-year-old victim worked for an agricultural co-operative in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island. The worker apparently became increasingly depressed about his growing workload. Eventually, the worker’s stress got so intense that he committed suicide.

The court found that the co-operative failed to protect the worker as required by Japanese workplace health and safety laws. “The course of suicide arises from his work,” the court ruled. The co-operative could have prevented the suicide, according to the court, “if it had taken appropriate measures such as restricting his working hours and recommending that he see a psychiatrist.”

In Japan, sadly, it’s not all that uncommon for workers to commit suicide because they’re overworked. According to police figures, as many as 2,200 workers per year take their own lives as a result of work-related stress. At least 10,000 more are the victims of heart attack or stroke brought on by their work stress. There’s even a name for the phenomenon of death from overworking—“karoshi.” There have also been a number of lawsuits brought by the relatives of karoshi victims against companies. But the amount of damages in the Hokkaido case shatters all previous records for karoshi lawsuits.

Of course, workplace stress is hardly unique to Japan. Although exact counts aren’t available, clearly some workers on this side of the globe end up as karoshi victims. And the restructuring and layoffs that are taking place at so many companies are likely to make the problem even worse.

Bottom Line: The karoshi phenomenon exists in Europe and North America. And it’s only a matter of time before somebody or something tries to hold employers on these continents responsible for the consequences.

For more information about karoshi in Japan, see, http://karoshi.jp/english/newspaper.html

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