Mitsubishi Motors Corp. will entirely abandon seniority-based pay on April 1 in an effort to improve productivity.

The automaker will replace the old scale with a performance-based wage system for all employees.

The move, announced Tuesday, is unusual for a major Japanese company. The nation's No. 4 carmaker hopes the new system will motivate younger employees and help it boost output.

Under the system, annual salaries excluding bonuses in a given wage bracket will vary by up to 10 percent depending on performance, they said.

MMC also said it plans offer special training in fiscal 2003 to foster quality leaders. The program will be similar to one run by its capital partner, German-American auto giant DaimlerChrysler A.G.

The new measures will enable employees in their 30s to become managers, said Atsushi Ueba, senior executive officer of MMC's human resources and organization office. Currently managerial posts are filled only by employees who are 40 and older.

The company introduced performance-based pay for managers in April 2002. Seniority-based pay currently applies to regular employees under the age of 50.

The MMC labor union agreed to the new wage system for all employees last year and has been discussing details of the system, including wage brackets and evaluation methods, with company management, the firm said.

"We needed to establish a pay system based not on employees' age and length of employment, but on their performance" to successfully carry out corporate restructuring between the 2001 and 2003 business years, Ueba said.