Panasonic Wants Employees To Relax, Limits Work Days To 11 hours (cnet.com)

Japan is notorious for its long working hours, which have been blamed for a national health crisis known as "karoshi" -- death from overwork. From a report on CNET: Panasonic hopes to curb this, instructing its 100,000-ish employees to work no later than 8 p.m. each day, reports Asahi Shimbun. This hour reduction still enables a 55-hour working week, but the directive from Panasonic President Kazuhiro Tsuga also limited overtime to 80 hours a month.

Comments

Only?

[kuzb]

11 hours. What an improvement! This is like saying "we used to allow murder all week, but now we've limited it only to the weekends".

Re: Only?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair that would be an significant improvement.

Re:Only?

[SScorpio]

Bunch of slackers, not even working half days (12 hours).

Re:Only?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Because you were.
What we call routine, they call ritual.

Yes, I know. After almost a dozen years with them I'm well versed in the ins and outs of Japanese business/social protocol.

Two hands, both corners of card pinched in index finger and thumb, card facing recipient, face up. Bow (30-60 deg, depending on your back, rank, etc.), look approx at recipients feet, present card. ** hold a 90 degree bow for 30 seconds.

We did a much shorter "business bow", nowhere near 30 seconds, maybe a few seconds just to show deference. And nowhere near 90 degrees, it was a much less formal thing with us and they actually started copying us when we were in an informal setting.

Because they were taught in English class that "too" and "very" are often interchangeable, many of them would shake your hand and say "Thank you too much!" lol

They were some of the best people I ever worked with, period. The company backed us 100% and took care of us like you wouldn't believe.

A client once complained *very* unfairly about me but my boss knew it was total bullshit. The client made noises about disciplining me and my boss told him not to worry, he would. He called me into his office and said, "I am disciplining you," and then he laughed and took me out to dinner at a great steak house in San Francisco.

That client really didn't like Japanese people and he would ask that I come to his lab instead of one of the Japanese guys. My boss would always tell him in fake broken English that, "No, no I discipline him like you ask, he never get to come to your place again, don't worry!" And then he'd send one of the Japanese guys cuz he knew it made the client cranky, lol.

reactions were mixed

[nimbius]

japanese: 11 hours!? ill never get anything done and my wife wont let me come home after less than 16 hours you insensitive clods!!
Americans: 11 hours...so...thats an entire 11 hour shift at just one job? not 5 jobs?
French: ....
Americans: someone call an ambulance, the french guy just dropped dead after reading the title.
dead japanese man: how shameful. ive been dead for 5 months and still manage to get to work on time. stop making excuses for yourself.