Karoshi is a term that has been used in Japan for a long time. It literally means “death by overwork,” as the culture of the land is to work oneself into the ground.
But that all might be about to change. Japanese officials are looking to legislate five annual compulsory paid holidays. Currently the Japanese are considered as having too much mental and physical ill-health due to overwork since it is quite typical for workers to “use less than half of their leave allowance a year.” Indeed one survey found that in 2013, one out of every six workers took no paid holiday at all.
Interestingly though, moving over to the west, the idea of paid vacations is not so clear-cut. According to John Scmitt who co-authored the Center for Economic and Policy Research, until just last year employees in America for example, “had no statutory right to paid vacations [rendering it] the only advanced economy in the world that did not guarantee its workers paid vacation days and paid holidays.” However, legally EU employees are guaranteed “at least 20 paid vacations days per year, with 25 and even 30 days in some countries.” But in practice what does this actually mean?
That changed with the Paid Vacation Act passed in the 113th Congress 2013-14, but will only come into affect in 2016. Nonetheless, despite the law, Americans are in general being given paid vacation and just not taking it. For example, Harris Interactive at the end of last year found that workers are actually only using 51% of their paid vacation days. In addition that figure, 61% of Americans work while they are on vacation!
So it seems that irrespective of the law, Japan might have it right because even when people are entitled to paid vacations – in both eastern and western parts of the world – they are not taking it. So it could be time for Americans to enforce vacation to prevent them becoming a nation of “karoshis.”