Mitsubishi Electric Corp. said Wednesday it will cut remunerations of its CEO and two other executives following a recruit's suicide in 2019 which labor authorities last month determined as being work-related.

An engineer in his 20s killed himself in August 2019, four months after joining the company. He left a note that said he had been verbally abused by his superior at a facility in Amagasaki in western Japan's Hyogo Prefecture and told to commit suicide.

Mitsubishi Electric will reduce the monthly basic salary based on the amount received in fiscal 2020 through March for its CEO and President Takeshi Sugiyama by 50 percent for two months.

The electronics company also plans to cut the pay of two other executives -- Shinji Harada and Atsuhiro Yabu, in charge of human resources and total productivity management, respectively -- by 20 percent in April and May.

The three had voluntarily returned a smaller portion of their monthly basic salaries last year, but the company decided to take a fresh disciplinary action after the labor authority recognized in February that the company was responsible for the engineer's suicide, saying it was triggered by heavy stress in the workplace.

"With a strong resolve never to repeat this kind of incident, we will make it a top priority for the management to prevent recurrences of labor problems and make all-out efforts to secure a workplace environment where all employees can maintain their mental and physical health," the company said in a statement.

Between 2014 and 2017, labor authorities recognized that five male employees of Mitsubishi Electric had suffered mental illness as a result of being overworked in their engineering or research duties. Two of them committed suicide.

Last year, the company introduced a program to improve its workplace environment and prevent labor problems, including lectures for all employees to learn how to prevent harassment.

Japan's notorious severe workplace environment, including long overtime work and harassment by senior employees, came under the spotlight again after a 24-year-old new female employee of advertising giant Dentsu Group Inc. committed suicide in 2015 due to excessive overtime work.

==Kyodo

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