There has been a rash of 24 suicides and 13 suicide attempts in the France Telecom workforce since February 2008. France Telecom has become the 3rd largest phone company in Europe. Most all of the suicides and suicide attempts have been blamed on the restructuring efforts that have been underway since an economic downturn was starting to hit globally in the beginning of 2006. The company once owned completely by the the state of France (France still owns the majority with abt. 27% of shares) privatized back in 1997 but the job restructuring and reshuffling didn’t start taking dramatic shifts until the 2006-2008 timeline. The company laid off some 22,000 people between 2006 and 2008, and has taken reassigned and relocated 1000’s of others.
One of the attempted suicide victims whom stabbed himself in the stomach during a meeting. A meeting where he was advised that he would be moving positions.
"I was fed up," Yonnel Dervin, a 49-year-old technician, said from his home in the town of Troyes where he was recovering after five days in hospital.
"I decided to do it just at the moment when they told me I was good for nothing.
"The night before, my manager had called me in his office to tell me that I no longer had the skills required for my job and that I had to change."
Many more cited these types of reorganizations as the sole reason for ending their lives.
A 32 year old woman flung herself out of 4th floor office window after work one night back in September. Moments before she had sent the following email to her father.
“I’m going to become the 23rd staff member to commit suicide,”
“When I called you this morning, you said I didn’t seem quite right,” said, according to the story. “You were right. My suicidal impulses are taking over again. I’ve decided to act upon them tonight.”
"I can’t accept the new reorganisation in my department. I’m getting a new boss and I’d rather die. I’m leaving my handbag with my mobiles and keys in the office, but I’ll take my donor card with me, you never know," she wrote.
The most recent suicide occurred Sept 21st when a 51-year-old man jumped from a highway bridge in the French Alps. The employee, who was married with two children, left a note blaming the work atmosphere for his decision to end his life.
Eight suicides have taken place since the beginning of the summer alone. One man was found in his apartment, another hung himself in his office cubicle.Again both citing working conditions at Telecom for the reason of their suicides.
It is said that France has a suicide rate 50% higher than the U.S which after reading several articles on the subject seems to be what the company is standing by a national average of 26.4 a year for every 100,000 men and 9.2 per for every 100,000 women. Based on those figures, the company argues that the number of suicides within the ranks of France Telecom is below the national average. But the problem really isn’t based on a practicality of figures, the problem is that all of these people are directly implicating Telecoms management for their sudden loss of a will to live.
As recently as today the former chief exec Louis- Pierre Wenes resigned after labor organizations had been demanding his resignation since last week . In September after the last round of suicides there were some attempts(albeit the State was mandating something be done) to quarantine the suicide hysteria. CEO Didier Lombard implemented a plan to monitor and counsel staff thought to be suicidal, and temporarily froze 500 employee transfers that were part of the restructuring plans. That freeze was today extended until the end of the year. Didier Lombard himself was caught in some very controversial statements in regards to the suicide epidemic. The website Mediapart released a video showing Lombard telling a management meeting this year that "those who think they can just stick to their routine and not worry about a thing are sorely mistaken".He went on to suggest that staff outside Paris spent their time at the beach, fishing for mussels, adding those days were "over". France Telecom brushed off Lombard’s comments as a joke between colleagues. With the company adamant that its restructuring must continue if it is to compete with European rivals. There was even a supposed misquote from Mr Lombard, FT’s CEO, suggesting the suicides a “mode” which translates to “fashion”. He then reversed his statement saying he had meant to say “mood”, before saying he had meant to say ‘mood’, which from what I can find means the same in English and French.
Furthermore my thoughts are its not that these people didnt want to work, or work at that job in which they had become accustomed, they were being told they could not work in their positions. Shuffling engineers into sales , demoting 20yr in managers to clerks who were forced to train their replacements. The work/life culture there is so different from what we know in America. (dont know from personal experience just reading into it I suppose) Most of these people were grandfathered in as public servants after the State allowed the privatization, which entitles them to that job for life.So your 50 years old working at the same place for 25 years, things were probably about the same for the first 20 and then BOOM technology changes, management changes,expectations change. Everything you have ever known to count on has been ripped away from you its a pretty hard pill to swallow. People are not as willing and possibly not even capable of accepting this long line of changes. Management then takes on a role where they need to force feed rhetoric which they themselves might not even deem fair but in order to appease the powers above you need to control the strings to those below. My research has led me down a path that possibly points out that the State themselves could have a hand in pushing for extreme profitability in order to decrease budget woes…and as the companies biggest shareholder it seems possible. Wouldnt that be an interesting spin on events? I can see the headlines – French State Ultimately Responsible for Telcom Suicides- or something like that.. Not that I think anyone would want to impose standards and practices that would knowingly drive someone or a group of people for that matter into a suicide frenzy, but unknowingly..sure. Greed can cast iron blinders over your eyes if you let it. Americans haven’t had job security since the 70′s as a culture we are used to thinking..oh well find something else. For them its an identity crisis. Its bringing the already unstable to a place where they cant see themselves living another day without that identity defining them.
I have linked to a video below that goes into everything a bit more and is sure to hit some points I haven’t made here. Its really just a tragic macabre story, the kind of story the human condition is irrefutably drawn to. I know I set my google alerts.
**I would like to apologize for not sourcing this right- I closed out of my pages before grabbing the appropriate URLS for the excerpts that I copied directly. Mostly I just used the info and put it into my words. I fished these site pages out of my history and for whatever it is worth these articles were either sourced directly or used for research.
Other sources:
http://www.news.com.au/business/story/0,27753,26086028-5012426,00.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113352329
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oct/05/telecoms-france
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aBXIxDnDX8aY
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601090&sid=aUr.vDtagnng
