white paper 復習
政府が報告した、日本の長時間労働や過労についての記事からです。
1 in 4 firms in Japan say workers log over 80 overtime hours a month
Nearly 1 in 4 companies have admitted that some employees do more than 80 hours of overwork per month, according to the nation’s first white paper released Friday on karoshi, or death by overwork.
According to the survey, taken between last December and January this year, about 10.8 percent of companies said they had workers putting in 80 to 100 hours of overtime a month, while another 11.9 percent said they had workers doing more than 100 hours.
The paper, said to be the first of its kind in the world, was based on responses from 1,743 companies and 19,583 workers. It had targeted 10,000 firms and 20,000 employees.
The document was adopted by the government as part of measures to combat karoshi, in line with a law that came into effect in November 2014.
By industry, IT workers were found to be the most overworked, with 44.4 percent of IT companies that responded to the survey saying some of their employees did more than 80 hours of overtime per month. For academic, research and engineering-sector organizations the number was 40.5 percent, followed by transport and postal services companies at 38.4 percent.
Meanwhile, the government acknowledged 96 deaths from strokes and heart attacks as being work related and awarded compensation to such karoshi victims in fiscal 2015 ending in March, while it awarded compensation in 93 cases where people distressed by work-related problems committed or attempted suicide. Experts, however, have long said criteria used for the state compensation scheme is too narrow and that the actual number of people who die from overwork is much higher.
According to National Police Agency statistics, 2,159 people committed suicide due at least in part to work-related problems in 2015.
取り上げる表現は"white paper"です。
『ジーニアス英和辞典』第4版(大修館)で確認してみると、そのまま「白書(政府の公式報告書)」とありました。
LDOCEを見てみると、"an official report from the Britishgovernment, explaining their ideas and plans concerning a particular subject before a new law is introduced"とあり、新たに法律を作る際に作成される文書であることが分かります。戦後，連合軍が占領していたときに民主化の目的で導入された情報公開の一部だそうです。
今回の場合は、日本の4分の1の企業が月に80時間以上労働時間がオーバーしていることや過労死の現状を報告する「過労死等防止対策白書」のことを指します。
2014年に制定された「過労死防止法」で、毎年報告することが定められましたが、今回が初の作成でした。(Akim)
