Madhouse is in trouble as a production assistant is seeking payment as he had collapsed from being overworked. This is spawning a workers union to form based on the unknown worked being paid over 100 hours unpaid over time. We now know more details about this.
It seems as though it isn’t just a 100 hours. The producer states that they have worked over 393 hours a month. Now in Japan they only allow a 100 hour over time by law. So this might spell trouble but if you listen to the interview it isn’t as simple as the company is to blame.
” I was working on one of the later episodes of a series. The storyboards only got finished a month before the broadcast, so we had to compact a three-month production schedule into one month. During that time I would sleep at the studio for three days, only going home to have showers.
It was around 7 in the morning when I was returning to my apartment one day when all the hunger, tiredness, and stress over all the things I had to do got to me and I collapsed on the road. A policeman who just happened to be cycling by called the ambulance for me. When I woke up, I was like, “Oh, overwork huh.” I had some IV dripped into me, paid the 10,000 yen ambulance fee, and then went home just like that.”
Here is the part to pay attention to with regards to the blame.
[When the assistant called the studio to inform them of what happened, they told him to take a day off. But it was one week before the broadcast. The assistant went back to work the next day. However, he recalls that the animation director continued to ask for retakes right to the very end in order to meet quality standards. When the work was finally completed to a “bare minimum” standard at the cost of everyone’s sleep, the higher ups assumed that everything was okay and nothing got addressed.
After that incident, the assistant was diagnosed with a psychogenic reaction. After two months of taking medication while working, the assistant recovered and joined the Black Company Union, a trade union formed in 2017 that offers consultation and support for workers across various industries..
The Mayo Clinic defines a psychogenic reaction, also called a functional neurologic disorder, as a disease that affects the nervous system “that can’t be explained by a neurological disease or other medical condition. However, the symptoms are real and cause significant distress or problems functioning.” A psychogenic reaction can cause a person to be unable to walk, swallow, see, or hear. The reaction can vary in severity but cannot be controlled by the affected person.
In the meantime, the assistant has racked up three million yen (US$26,800) worth of unpaid overtime. According to youth labor rights activist Shōhei Sakakura, Madhouse has a flat rate for overtime past 50 hours. “If you work over 50 hours, you won’t get any extra money for it. However, this wasn’t explained at all to the worker before he joined the company. After doing the math, we believe he has accrued three million yen worth of unpaid overtime.”]
It seems that the worker hopes to change things as it is usual for people to work 100 – 200 hours over time for producers in general which has lead to some problems. Anime News Network mentions a producer from A-1 Pictures committing suicide. The reason was depression from working long hours. This is what the producer from Madhouse is hoping to change as they don’t want to see anymore tragedies like this.
As always thank you for reading.
