A man in his 20s whose sexual orientation was revealed by his boss without his consent was deemed eligible for workplace compensation by a Tokyo labor office in March last year, marking what is likely the first time an outing has been recognized as a work-related injury, the man's support group said Monday.
The recognition came as the Ikebukuro labor standards supervision office found that the boss's outing constituted an abuse of power and caused significant psychological distress to the man, the nonprofit organization Posse said at a press conference in Tokyo.
According to the organization, the man started working at an insurance agency in Tokyo's Toshima Ward in 2019, and disclosed he was gay to his boss during the interview.
Despite the man also saying that he wanted to inform his colleagues at a timing of his choice, his boss immediately told a female employee without his consent. The man eventually had to leave the job due to mental issues that resulted from being ignored by the woman.
At the press conference, the man said the experience had made him develop a distrust for people and that he had even considered suicide. Praising last year's recognition by the local labor office, the man said it demonstrated that outings constitute a human rights violation and could make victims eligible for compensation.
According to the man, he discovered he was outed when his boss said during a drinking session, "I thought you would be too embarrassed to tell others yourself. It's okay if it's just one person, right?"
The man later sought advice from Posse and joined a labor union. During the collective bargaining, the company said they had revealed his sexual orientation with good intentions.
In October 2020, after mediation from Toshima Ward based on an ordinance banning outings, the company apologized for the outing and provided the man with a settlement.
The man later applied for the incident to be recognized as a work-related injury, with his support group submitting a petition with over 18,000 signatures to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare to approve the application.
The harmful consequences of outing hit the national consciousness in 2015 when a Hitotsubashi University graduate student died after plunging from a university building in an apparent suicide after his romantic interest divulged his sexual orientation to his peers.
The city of Kunitachi, which hosts the university, and some other local authorities have since implemented ordinances that specifically ban the outing of sexual minorities, with Mie in central Japan becoming the first among the country's 47 prefectures to enforce something similar in April 2021.
