French Telecom Company Convicted Of 'Moral Harassment' After Employee Suicides
Source: NPR
The former CEO of a French telecommunications company has been sentenced to jail in connection with a series of employee suicides with one worker taking their own life after describing "management by terror" at the firm. The landmark ruling handed down Friday in a Paris courtroom caps the first time in France that a major company has been tried on a charge of "collective moral harassment" and it delivered four months in jail and a fine of more than $16,000 for Didier Lombard, ex-CEO of the French phone and Internet provider now known as Orange.
The company itself must pay a fine 75,000 euros or more than $83,000 along with more in damages. Jail time and fines also were meted out for two other top executives, Lombard's former deputy Louis-Pierre Wenes and human resources Director Olivier Barberot, while a handful of other managers also received guilty verdicts.
The roots of the case date back about two decades, to a period when the company, then known by the name France Télécom, was still part of the government's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. Once a state-run monopoly, the company sold off most of its shares and underwent a process of privatization in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
That process left its employees in an uncomfortable situation: still enjoying the strong employment protections of civil servants, but working for a management structure newly constrained by the marketplace and looking to shed costs to compete. As journalist Jake Cigainero reported for NPR earlier this year, Didier wanted to slash the company's staff by 20% about 22,000 people but most of the targeted employees resisted the idea of quitting. - More...
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2019/12/20/790101370/french-telecom-company-convicted-of-moral-harassment-after-employee-suicides
A campaign to get employees to leave was started by Didier and fellow executives and managers, a kind of "management by terror." So demotions, demeaning work, micromanagement, repeated reassignments or outright isolation. As once source put it, simply getting workers to leave "either through the window or through the door."
The court looked at 39 cases from the late 2000s including 19 employees who took their lives at work or with suicide notes blaming the company, and 12 others who attempted to do so.
Lombard and his associates have long denied wrongdoing. In 2009 he said "the pressure is necessary because we have to compete on the world market." A massive restructuring was necessary for the company's economic survival, he maintained, before acknowledging: "There is a way to be more humane in doing so."
- Didier Lombard, former chief executive of the French telecommunications powerhouse now known as Orange, leaves the courtroom Friday after receiving a jail sentence over a string of employee suicides.
fleur-de-lisa
(14,624 posts)appalachiablue
(41,131 posts)joanbarnes
(1,722 posts)cstanleytech
(26,291 posts)rickyhall
(4,889 posts)I recently retired from Walmart. During my 4 years at the store I saw none of that but we had a really good & fair manager. I only had a problem with 1 assistant manager with mental deficiencies.
PatSeg
(47,430 posts)19 suicides and 12 attempted suicides? That is brutal. What on earth did they do to push these people that far?
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)That is a staggering number when you consider that many firms lay off people by the thousands and don't have those kinds of casualties. WTF?
PatSeg
(47,430 posts)but nothing they did pushed a lot of people to commit or attempt suicide.
Jedi Guy
(3,190 posts)Last edited Fri Dec 20, 2019, 10:54 PM - Edit history (1)
I work in audit and compliance, so they make sure to mention it to me and my team in the hope that we'll seek out errors and mistakes that they can use against the employee(s) in question. Or in the hope that we'll be extra punitive in our evaluations.
One of these employees (who is no longer with us, as he passed away) was a fellow from Nigeria who had serious kidney issues that required frequent dialysis. He wasn't a great performer, so the senior manager of his department was trying to manage him out. If he lost his job, his immigration status would change and he'd be sent back to Nigeria, which was essentially a death sentence. We refused to help her do that.
If I find a mistake that someone made, I'll give a blunt and honest assessment. But I don't go looking for shit to hammer people with, no matter how many times management implies they'd like that.
appalachiablue
(41,131 posts)OldBaldy1701E
(5,128 posts)"What? What's wrong with that?"