Suicide at Dentsu Ends in $4,000 Fine for Excessive Employee Overtime
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A court in Tokyo has ordered advertising giant Dentsu Inc., to pay a small fine for failing to stop employees in Japan from logging excessive overtime, Japanese news reports said.
The Tokyo Summary Court on Friday said Dentsu must pay a fine of 500,000 yen, or about $4,440, The Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported. Dentsu, the world’s fifth-biggest agency company by revenue, has faced intense scrutiny over its working conditions in Japan after a young staffer named Matsuri Takahashi jumped to her death from a corporate dormitory nearly two years ago. The 24-year-old was one of four employees cited in the case.
Prosecutors in Tokyo sent the case against Dentsu to court after the suicide and it has drawn international attention to difficult labor conditions common at companies in Japan, and to the term karoshia word that means “death by overwork” in Japanese. Labor authorities had ruled Takahashi’s death a case of karoshi. The company’s former CEO resigned amid the case.
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