8 years ago
3
Japan Tells Its Workers to Take More Vacation
Japan wants its workers to take more holidays and work fewer hours to cut down the number of people pushing themselves into an early grave. Decades after "karoshi," death from overwork, entered the Japanese lexicon, the government is still battling to get control of the problem. Leave entitlements and national holidays have increased, but the Japanese still shun vacations and the number of work-related suicides is little changed over the past decade.
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http://www.bloomberg.com
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173 OT hours doesn't sound like a ton to me. In the summer (April 16-October 31), I generally work about 100 OT hours per month, which works out to around 600-700 OT hours total. In the winter (November 1 - April 15), I use my leave and work approx. -10 hours of OT per month, which works out to about -60 OT hours total, not counting my leave.
I earn around 200 hours of leave per year and use around 150 (4 weeks). I'll continue this until I have around 500 hours banked. Then I'll be earning about 240 hours of leave per year and use about 265 (7 weeks) per year.
I think some of us are less susceptible to depression caused by overwork and stressful work environments. I guess the goal is to get people to actually exercise their time-off so that they can disconnect from their work place and enjoy other far less stressful things... seriously, even laying around the house doing nothing but binge watching tv shows is probably considered a way to relieve the every day stress of work that eventually builds up without most people noticing until its too late.
yeah, I work in construction in Alaska, so the summer is all we have. That's why my schedule is skewed so much towards the summer. If I was working 100 OT hours per month year round it would be way more stressful. The way it is set up, I know that my schedule will basically be cut in half in the winter. Knowing that relief is coming is almost as good as the relief itself. However, since I get paid overtime, my income is also cut in half for the winter.
I guess what I'm saying is that working 600 OT hours per year consistently would be more difficult than working 600 OT hours over 6 months and then working less than full time for the next 6 months.