Then two weeks ago, the burger chain popularised by such cartoon characters as Ronald McDonald and the villainous Hamburglar, announced that it would pay overtime wages to all of its nearly 2,000 store managers nationwide.
Despite this high-profile case, union members insist that many Japanese workers continue to be exploited throughout the economy.
Employers in Japan are supposed to pay a worker overtime if they put in more than eight hours a day or over 40 hours a week.
To avoid doing so, many employers routinely give workers fancy job titles suggesting managerial responsibility, but continue to make them toil away like rank-and-file employees.
Although an allowance is frequently given to such 'managers', they invariably end up taking home less pay than before their 'promotion'.
When such cases of exploitation involved small- and medium-sized companies, the news rarely if ever made the headlines. But when it came to a household name like McDonald's, the social impact was clearly different.
After a two-year trial, the court ruled that Mr Hiroshi Takano, 46, who was in charge of a McDonald's outlet near Tokyo, was a 'manager only in name'. Therefore, the company was liable to compensate him for overtime work.
Mr Takano was in the store from as early as 5am until closing time late at night every day, frequently pitching in during peak hours - on top of his own work.
At one stage, he even had to work 63 days in a row without a break. A doctor warned him that he could have a stroke if the strenuous work regime went on.
To rub salt into the wound, Mr Takano received just 6.4million yen a year, down from 7.6million yen before his promotion, even though he had to work harder than before.
At the time of the court judgment, he told reporters: 'During the trial, there were colleagues who died suddenly without warning. If the judgment had come down earlier, such sad things might not have happened.'
Taking their cue from the McDonald's case, many big-name concerns - from convenience stores to apparel companies - have since announced that they will pay overtime to their store managers.
But Mr Mitsuteru Suda of the Labour Consultation Centre, a non-profit organisation which helps workers fight for their rights, says that does not mean such workers will be paid more.
'We have heard that in return for paying overtime, some companies have reduced the basic pay of the workers so that their manpower bill remains unchanged,' said Mr Suda.
But Japanese workers are partly to blame for the situation, he said.
These days, only 18.1 per cent of Japanese workers are unionised and the rate has been falling over the years.
Rogue employers are not just to be found in the retail and food sectors.
When Mr Suda's organisation held a phone-in consultation session one Sunday in April, half of the people who called were from trading companies, IT ventures and other white-collar businesses.
Even doctors are not immune. In April, a public medical facility in Shiga prefecture, western Japan, was ordered by the local authorities to pay its doctors overtime.
The doctors were given titles of director or general manager, but were made to serve long hours tending to patients.
A survey conducted by the publicly-funded NHK network in March found that 57per cent of Japanese workers who held managerial titles believed they were being exploited.
'When responsibility goes up and the pay does not, frustration grows,' said senior economist Hisashi Yamada of the Japan Research Institute.
'If the problem is neglected, motivation will drop and sooner or later, the company itself suffers.'
This article was first published in The Straits Times on June 7, 2008.
