Japense CEO Resigns over Employee Suicide due to Overwork, Company Charged With Death

'I accept responsibility': Japanese company boss resigns to take responsibility for young woman 'driven to suicide by overwork'

• Dentsu Inc. president Tadashi Ishii has quit following death of employee, 24
• Advertising agency boss resigned as prosecutors pressed charges against firm
• Want charges against unidentified worker who overworked Matsuri Takahashi
• 2000 Japanese people a year kill themselves due to work-related stress, the government said. 
  
  

The head of a top Japanese advertising agency has resigned just 24 hours after prosecutors pressed charges against his company for the suicide of an overworked employee.

* The first person to be officially ruled a suicide from overwork was also a Dentsu employee. 

* Ichiro Oshima, 24, didn't get a single day off for 17 months.
* She had averaged less than two hours of sleep a night.
* Still, Dentsu had argued in the 1997 court case that personal troubles were behind his 1991 suicide.
* Death linked to exhaustion is so common it's expressed as a special term, 'karoshi' which includes suicides from overwork. 

Dentsu Inc. president Tadashi Ishii told reporters he would take responsibility for the death of Matsuri Takahashi. The resignation came a day after prosecutors demanded charges be laid against an unidentified worker for driving the 24-year-old woman to kill herself last year, after clocking up massive overtime in the first months on the job.

Dentsu Inc. president Tadashi Ishii tell reportors he will resign over the suicide of a worker who had clocked massive overtime. (Kyodo News via Associated Press image)

Mr Ishii acknowledged overtime was still a major problem with more than 100 workers still doing more than 80 hours of extra work a month.

'This is something that should never have been allowed to happen,' he told reporters at his company's Tokyo headquarters on Thursday.

Ms Takahashi started working at Dentsu in April 2015. Her workload surged by October and she often returned home at five in the morning after working all day and night. She was clocking up 100 hours of overtime a month before she jumped from her workplace balcony in December 2015.

Matsuri Takahashi committed suicide in December 2015, just eight months after starting work at the Dentsu advertising agency which overworked her.

Labour regulators raided Dentsu last month after the company repeatedly promised to curtail overtime, suspected of being widespread.

It started turning off headquarters lights at 10 pm so workers would go home.

Dentsu acknowledged Takahashi's treatment was like harassment because her records showed monthly overtime within company regulations of 70 hours, with numbers like 69.9 hours, when she had actually been working far more hours.

 

Dentsu Inc. president Tadashi Ishii, pictured centre, bows with other senior executives during a media conference at the company's Tokyo headquarters (Kyodo News via AP)

 

She left a farewell email begging her mother to not blame herself. 

'You're the best mum in the world,' Ms Takahashi wrote. 

'But why do things have to be so hard?'

In September, the government ruled overwork had killed her.

                                   Japanese advertising company Dentsu Inc. Tokyo's headquarters

The first person to be officially ruled a suicide from overwork was also a Dentsu employee. 

Ichiro Oshima, 24, didn't get a single day off for 17 months and had averaged less than two hours of sleep a night. 

Still, Dentsu had argued in the 1997 court case that personal troubles were behind his 1991 suicide. 

Death linked to exhaustion is so common it's expressed as a special term, 'karoshi' which includes suicides from overwork. 

About 2000 Japanese people a year kill themselves due to work-related stress, the government said. 

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4070530/Dentsu-chief-resign-employees-suicide-overwork.html