The manager of a Japanese 7-Eleven convenience store in Oita Prefecture killed himself after working non-stop to ensure the store was stocked all the time. The family accuses the company's headquarters of failing to supervise working conditions, while the company declines any responsibility.

Tokyo (AsiaNews) – Japan’s Labour Standard Inspection Office (LSIO) is treating the death by suicide of the manager at a 7-Eleven convenience store in Oita Prefecture as a work-related accident.

The 38-year-old man, who took his own life in 2022, had worked for six consecutive months without taking a single day off, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reports.

The manager left a note describing gruelling working conditions: “Long hours with no breaks are the norm,” “No matter how hard I work to fill shifts, it’s just too hard for me,” and “Being a convenience store manager is simply another way of being taken advantage of.”

The man's family has asked 7-Eleven, Japan's largest convenience store chain to take on more responsibility for labour management.

The victim had been hired full-time in 2015 and had become director of a new store in 2019. In the absence of the owner, the manager took care of everything, from ordering and displaying merchandise to hiring employees and creating work shifts. But that's not all.

“Around the time he was appointed manager of the store, his duties increased, such as filling in for part-time workers who were suddenly absent,” the victim’s widow said. Because of this, he could no longer take time off”.

The couple were married in March 2021 and, in a year and four months, the husband had rarely taken vacation.

The store’s work rules provide for at least one day off per week, but in a separate agreement, employees can work on five holidays per month, meaning there is no upper limit on consecutive work days.

Even after he came home late at night, he would receive work-related phone calls. For half the week, he slept only about two hours a night. Soon, he started yelling in his sleep. To his wife, he would just say: “I'm fine”, but he began losing his appetite showing increasing signs of distress.

“He was a kind man, and even when things got messy, he would accept it for the time being,” she explained. In his suicide note, he wrote the names of his wife and three children, including a baby, in hiragana, and apologised, “I’m sorry.”

The LSIO with jurisdiction over the 7-Eleven store in question found that the man had developed severe depression the day before he committed suicide. It also confirmed he had not taken a single day off in the six months before his illness.

The office concluded the reason for the continuous work was “to ensure the smooth operation of the 24-hour store, including filling in (for other staff) on their shifts,” and “to ensure that the store was staffed, including for late-night work.”

The shop owner claimed that the man had non-work-related problems, but the LSIO eventually determined that it was a work-related accident and that the family, consisting of his wife and three children, was entitled to compensation under the workers’ compensation insurance.

Even though the 7-Eleven head office knew about the manager’s workload, it declined any responsibility. In a statement, it says: “The deceased entered into an employment contract with the store owner, and the owner is fully responsible for compliance with the Labour Standards Law and other laws and regulations. [The head office] does not assume any responsibility.”

It goes on to say that, “It is physically and objectively impossible for the head office to check each employee’s work status individually” in its 20,000 franchise stores.

Kyoko Ota, the victim’s family lawyer, noted that the head office could have monitored the situation and intervened. “The head office could have checked to see if (the manager) was working continuously for long periods of time and demanded the franchise store make improvements,” Ota said.

“I would like to see the head office do a better job of instructing and educating its franchisees that it is not right for workers at convenience stores, even those that are open 24/7, to work for six months without taking a day off at all,” the widow said.

The authorities have been monitoring working conditions in convenience stores for some time. A 2019 survey by the Ministry of Labour found that nearly 30 per cent of employees work "almost every day," adding that several cases of overwork deaths had been reported.

• japan
• labour
• workers
• overwork
• 7-eleven
• suicide
• inquiry
• labour standard inspection office