TOKYO -- Japan's labor ministry is planning to seek criminal charges against Dentsu for enforcing excessive overtime that has resulted in a staff suicide, a rare move in a country where long work hours are the norm.
A team of 88 investigators from the ministry seized documents such as work-assignment records and building entry data during Monday raids on Dentsu's Tokyo headquarters and branch offices in Osaka, Kyoto and Nagoya. Some 30 members of an overwork task force spent nearly the entire day at the Tokyo office, from around 9:30 a.m. to past 4 p.m.
