TOKYO, June 14 (Xinhua) -- Japanese travel agency H.I.S. Co., Ltd. on Wednesday was referred to prosecutors by labor authorities for allegedly making its employees work illegal amounts of overtime.
In the latest case involving H.I.S., the Tokyo-based agency is facing allegations of violating the labor standards law in 2015 when two sales staff were forced to work more than the company's maximum 78 hours of overtime per month.
Sources familiar with the matter said that one of the corporate sales officials logged 110 hours of overtime during one month in 2015 and the other 135 hours.
The travel agency has been warned about violating the labor standards law on five previous occasions since 2014 and urged to fix its operational procedures regarding the amount of hours its employees log.
The agency was probed in March last year by labor authorities who then raided its offices last July under suspicions it had continued to thwart the labor standards law.
The Japanese government has been under pressure to change its outmoded culture of business people working inordinately long hours, particularly after a string of work related deaths, known here as "karoshi", made global headlines.
In one particular case, Dentsu Inc., the fifth-largest advertising agency in the world and the largest in Japan, was referred to prosecutors last year following the high-profile suicide on Christmas day in 2015 of one of the agency's young female employees, who had been ludicrously overworked.
The Tokyo Labor Bureau said the suicide of Matsuri Takahashi, 24, was ruled as related to excessive overtime, with the young lady logging as much as 105 hours of overtime over the course of a single month.
According to a health ministry white paper citing data from both the National Police Agency and the Cabinet Office, "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 with reference to the matter.
