JAPAN TODAY


 

OSAKA — Kansai Electric Power Co has not paid some 12,900 employees a total of around 1.7 billion yen in overtime wages for a two-year period through the end of last year.

The Osaka-based utility discovered the underpayments for late-night overtime work while probing an overwork-related suicide of one of its employees last April. The investigations were mandated by labor authorities following the suicide.

Kansai Electric has tallied actual work hours of all of its 22,400 employees and will retroactively make up the unpaid overtime wages, it said Thursday, adding that in five exceptional cases it owes individuals 3 million yen or more each.

The company will compile a report on overtime labor encompassing the results of the probe and submit it to labor inspection offices.

The Tsuruga Labor Standard Inspection Office summoned the utility’s President Shigeki Iwane on Jan 6 to provide information following the suicide of the employee.

The labor office instructed the utility to analyze the working hours of all employees in managerial positions, given that the employee who committed suicide officially held a management post.

The employee, a section chief in his 40s, worked more than 100 hours—and sometimes up to 200 hours—of overtime per month prior to his suicide. He was apparently under pressure to complete a process that would enable Kansai Electric to seek regulatory approval to extend the operating life of two of its aging nuclear reactors at the Takahama plant in Fukui Prefecture.

The man committed suicide at a hotel in Tokyo in mid-April during a business trip and the Tsuruga labor office in Fukui concluded in October that overwork played a role in his death.

On Jan 17, the utility said it received a recommendation of correction dated Dec 20 from another labor inspection office in Osaka regarding unpaid overtime wages that were discovered through e-mail records. Six employees were found to have been underpaid in the case.

The company in January established a committee headed by the president to tackle the overwork issue and announced preventive measures including the prohibition of overtime exceeding 80 hours per month.

© KYODO