"Fulfilling Quotas Leads to Debt for Family... 'Self-Destructive Sales' That Caused Death of Japanese Office Worker"

Controversy Over Self-Destructive Sales Forcing Quotas in Japan
Including Forced Purchase of Own Products and Passing Discount Costs to Dealers
Frequent Worker Deaths... Push to Ban Law Revision

After incidents of workers dying due to being forced to meet company quotas, the Japanese government has taken action against ‘self-destructive sales’.

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On the 24th, Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun reported that the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has begun efforts to prevent ‘self-destructive sales,’ where employees are forced to purchase their company’s products to meet ‘norma (quotas).’ The outlet stated that, as cases of suicide have occurred due to such coercion, the ministry plans to explicitly include this in the guidelines of the Workplace Harassment Prevention Act (Comprehensive Labor Policy Promotion Act) and urge companies to prepare countermeasures.

‘Norma’ refers to quotas, a term derived from the standard workload imposed on workers in the former Soviet Union. Self-destructive sales refer to acts where employees who fail to meet quotas are forced to sign contracts or purchase unnecessary products with their own money. Examples include a Nonghyup employee paying insurance premiums on behalf of others or a car salesperson covering discount amounts out of their own pocket.

In Aichi Prefecture, a man in his 30s working at a financial institution was found dead after experiencing stress from trying to meet deposit quotas and indebting his family. The bereaved family filed a lawsuit against the company, and in September, the Nagoya High Court ruled that excessive quotas and reprimands from superiors related to self-destructive sales were among the causes of the suicide.

The media reported that for workplace harassment (known in Japan as power harassment) to be recognized, three elements must be met: ▲ behavior or speech based on a superior-subordinate relationship ▲ actions exceeding the scope necessary for work ▲ results that harm the employee’s working environment. Regarding self-destructive sales, there have been cases where repeated demands from superiors to purchase unnecessary products were recognized as workplace harassment.

However, there is no law directly regulating this, and voices have called for clear inclusion in the guidelines of the Workplace Harassment Prevention Act. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare plans to newly include this in the guidelines and require companies to prepare countermeasures. The specific wording will be decided based on future discussions by the Labor Policy Council (an advisory body to the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare).

Yoichi Shimada, professor emeritus at Waseda University, told the media, "Self-destructive sales have existed for a long time and were tolerated as a necessary evil for corporate development, but in modern times, forcing burdens on workers is unacceptable. If the guideline revision spreads awareness that self-destructive sales are a form of workplace harassment, social scrutiny will become stricter and have a deterrent effect."