Dentsu into crisis Suicide and resignation plunge

Dec 30, 2016: Suicide, In Japan, the case made a great noise. It is important and its effects could be felt at various levels of the international sports movement. Dentsu, Japan’s number one advertising company, ranked 5th in the world, will soon change its position as president. Tadashi Ishii (photo above), its president and CEO, announced at a press conference that he had submitted his resignation. He will return the keys to his office at the beginning of January.

The reason: the suicide on the evening of December 25, 2015 of a young employee of the agency. A death that the Japanese government described as “death by overwork” in September.

Dentsu is the official marketing agency of the Tokyo 2020 Games Organizing Committee and several international sports institutions, including the International Athletics Federation (IAAF).

Matsuri Takahashi, a Dentsu employee only 24 years old, was killed in December last year. She had accumulated 105 additional hours of work in October alone.

After investigation, the Japanese Ministry of Labor concluded that the death of Matsuri Takahashi was a “karoshi”, literally a “death by overwork”. It resulted in searches on the premises of the advertising agency.

According to the Japanese press, the young woman suffered from depression, aggravated by her working conditions. She would have jumped from the top floor of a building housing the agency’s dormitories.

In Japan, section 36 of the Labor Code leaves employers free to determine the number of overtime hours of their employees and the conditions of their remuneration.

“It is extremely regrettable that we have not been able to prevent the overwork of a new recruit,” said Tadashi Ishii on Wednesday (December 28th). In order to take full responsibility, I wish to resign from the Presidency at a Board meeting in January “.

According to the former ex-president of Dentsu, the Ministry of Labor’s services allegedly alerted the company’s behavior, including one of its employees suspected of having violated labor law. Last month, Dentsu amended its overtime regulations, reducing the maximum number of hours per employee per month from 70 to 65.

Densu had already been pinned in the early 1990s for a similar case. The company was repeatedly warned about its practices that were deemed illegal.

According to a spokesman for Dentsu, the succession of Tadashi Ishii to the presidency of the agency is not yet settled. —- Franc Jeux