TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese woman hit out at corporate bosses this week, after her restaurant manager son died of a brain haemorrhage having done 200 hours of overtime in a month.
The case is the latest of hundreds of deaths a yearofficially determined to have been caused by the hardships ofworking for Japanese companies, where overtime is a matter ofcourse and holidays few and far between.
Takayuki Maezawa, who died at the age of 32 last October,was the second employee at unlisted restaurant chain Skylark CoLtd to die from overwork in the last four years, a unionofficial in Tokyo said.
"My son was an extremely responsible person, who couldnever refuse if asked to do something," the Asahi Shimbunquoted his 59-year-old mother as telling a news conference onThursday.
"The company used him. None of his superiors worried abouthis health."
She called on bereaved families to speak out to try toprevent further cases, the Nikkei financial daily said.Newspaper pictures showed Maezawa's sister weeping as she helda photograph of him.
Maezawa, who had been working at Skylark since 1991,usually left home around 7:00 a.m. and came back around 2:00a.m., taking only two or three days off each month, saidMitsuteru Suda of the National Union of General Workers TokyoTobu.
"We've been asking for improvement in their operations, butthis case shows that the company has yet to show signs ofremorse," Suda said.
An official at the Saitama branch of the labour ministrysaid they determined in June that Maezawa died from overwork,but declined to comment further, citing privacy concerns.
"We accept the decision seriously and want to try harder tooversee our operations," Shunichi Ito, a spokesman for Skylark,said.
Death from overwork, known as "karoshi", has long been aserious issue in Japan, where an average worker uses less than50 percent of paid holidays, according to government data.
Late last year, a district court ruled in favour of thewidow of a Toyota Motor Corp employee who said overwork hadcaused the death of her 30-year-old husband, who logged morethan 106 hours of overtime in his final month at one of thecarmaker's plants.
In the year to March 2008, the labour ministry determined142 people died from overwork.
(Reporting by Yoko Kubota; Editing by Isabel Reynolds)
