The worker will have a salary reduction of 10% for six months and must return to the State around 10,000 euros for the 355 hours and 19 minutes that he should have been working while smoking.
A 61-year-old employee of the Osaka prefectural government in Japan will accept a 10% pay cut and pay a fine of 1.44 million yen (about 10,000 euros). Crime? He took 4,512 smoke breaks at work over 14 years.
But he was not the only one who did it. According to the Japanese newspaper The Mainichi, two more male employees in the finance department took the same breaks, however, they will only see their salary reduced and they will not have to pay fines.
The investigation of the case began in September 2022, after HR department receiving an anonymous tip. The employees were warned that they could not leave the place to smoke, and in December of the same year, in a meeting with the supervisor, they lied assuring that they no longer smoked while working since they were alerted to the matter.
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Result. They had a 10% salary reduction for six months, and one of the employees, the 61-year-old, will have to return the equivalent of 10,000 euros of salary. It is that throughout 14 years he spent 355 hours and 19 minutes of work smoking, so his sanction became harsher – in Japan it is not allowed to take breaks to drink coffee or smoke.
Source: Observadora
