Whose to say they haven't toned things down it may have been worse for all we know plus a settlement would be between the individual and the company it would have no bearing on anyone else who hasn't taken issue, not only that some companies operate in an intimidating manner towards their workers to make it seem like the's little choice, Konami wouldn't announce to everyone "Yeah Toshiro wanted to sue the socks off us and we had to settle outside of court otherwise we would have been taken to the cleaners and had to pay his legal fees as well" otherwise more people would step forward. Believe me many companies often do things that bend or break the law it's just a case of when they get clocked for it.

The report could be false although the are several things backing it and one of them is the history of Team Silent who endured a non to pleasent time by Konami during development of the first Silent Hill, some of the workers they'd didn't even want to credit with work or pay at the time, the report also cites a news interview from a former employee which also backs it. I can tell you that if I told one of my workers to take a security role I would have broken the law here in the UK as that's a regulated post someone has to be trained up for over here, if something happened to them while they're filling in that post that would be a huge problem for the company.

Ofcourse the internet is going to see the more extreme side especially as Konami for a while have had a reputation as a place with a less then desired work place and now after the whole Kojima saga blew things open people are more likely going to support the workers then the companies as making noise over an issue to bring it out to the open can do a lot in contributing to solving it.

Displaying sales is not the same as displaying who is late not even in the same ball park.

Oh, so the guy with $0 sales for the day or has 0% customer satisfaction can't act humilated when's he's at the very bottom of the list?

Edit: Also to most management it is the same ball park.  

That 15 minutes you were late was a sale lost, or a positive customer interaction you missed.  You put yourself at the bottom.

I work with a sales team, tallying up a teams figures is not the same as announcing that person a was late from lunch not even remotely close and a strawman argument. Sales figures are part of of the structure, someone can have 0 sales one day and have the most sales the next day, when someone is having a hard time getting a sale we help as much as possible to reduce pressure they may be feeling, the managers even help with closing sales if need be or provide extra training, when your name is rang out throughout the company that is just an attempt to humilate the person and not a required trait for a company to function.

To give you an idea of how off you are suggesting these are the same, I've had someone come in late missing half the day but they sold more that day then everyone else, some people even stay late to make up lost time, I work for an finance firm who deals with things from investments and such so I don't know if the sales environement is different for you.

Bolded only makes me question this report even more. Again, why would Konami do something so blatantly illegal and dangerous to their own bottom line? I don't even see what that has to do with Konami, again the report doesn't say people aren't being trained for the roles they're being reassigned to.

The point is, there are several ways this report can be interpreted because it offers few details. Interpreting it in the worst way possible even when that interpretation implies they are breaking laws and committing human rights violations left and right is silly.

All of those things are inherently humiliating.   Everyone else is independently functioning.  One person gets pulled away for training.  Or if the entire team is called into training, it's obvious to narrow down who's the cause when the list is visible.

This is why everyone gets participation trophies in team sports.

Konami haven't done themselves any favours though.

Helping someone is not humiliating them, the person is ask for feedback in private by their manager on how they're finding it and can request it if they want, calling out names is humilating though.

Many companies assign skilled workers to meaningless desk jobs if they want to get rid of them. So kinda make sense people with desk jobs get assigned to manual labor for the same purpose...

Is that no internet access and rotating email adresses for productivity or security? Sounds like they're paranoid of their employees getting approached to spill the beans. In a world where every major release gets leaked weeks or even months before release it doesn't sound that unreasonable.

It doesn't sound like a great place to work either, although working with Kojima on MGS5, I'll be back in time from lunch.

This sounds dandy, until you run across the large amount of the population that internalizes constructive criticism as personal attacks.   Then everything becomes a form of humiliation.  

Let's move away from performance then.    

Someone starts a minor fire in the office kitchen.  The next day everyone is required to attend fire safety training and everyone knows why.  Humiliation?

This type of implied humiliation seems to fall into the same arena as the various implied discrimination cases and the courts go either way on them.