Toyota employee worked to death

A TOYOTA employee died of overwork after logging more than 106 hours of overtime in a month, a judge ruled yesterday, reversing a ministry’s earlier decision not to pay compensation to his widow.

The Toyota Labour Standards Inspection office, a local branch of Japan’s labour ministry, refused to pay the widow the usual compensation for a spouse’s work-related death, saying the man had only logged 45 hours of overtime in the month before he died, Japanese media reported.

But the court ruled that the employee had worked far more than that, said Yomiuri Online, a Japanese news website.