Govt steps in after string of deaths at France Telecom
23 suicides since early last year; minister summons telco chief
By Susan Sachs, For The Straits Times
PARIS: Alarmed by a rash of suicides among employees of France Telecom, the French government yesterday told the former public telephone company to act quickly to provide psychological help for stressed-out workers.
Labour Minister Xavier Darcos took the unusual step of summoning the head of France Telecom, Mr Didier Lombard, after the much-publicised suicide of a company employee last week.
The young woman jumped to her death from her fourth-floor office window in Paris on Friday after learning that she would be reporting to a new boss.
She was the sixth France Telecom worker to commit suicide since mid-July, and the 23rd since early last year.
A day earlier, another employee tried to stab himself after learning that he was being transferred to another job. A third worker was found unconscious at the office on Monday after ingesting barbiturates in an apparent suicide attempt during her lunch break.
Mr Darcos said he would send inspectors to France Telecom sites to ensure corporate changes were made, adding that the company had to ‘respect its workers’. Inspectors are to report back to the minister each month.
While the overall numbers are not out of line with national suicide rates, union leaders and in-house doctors at the telecommunications giant raised a public alarm after the latest incident.
They blamed company managers for creating a pressure-cooker atmosphere in which workers felt increasingly isolated, belittled by their bosses and insecure about their future as the company strove for ever greater productivity and profits.
A worker who killed himself in July left a note that reportedly named France Telecom as ‘the only cause’ of his suicide. He wrote that he was a victim of overwork and ‘management by terror’.
The company, which had revenues of ¥55 billion (S$114.2 billion) last year, was a state-owned utility until it was privatised in 1998.
Since then, its profile has changed dramatically as its monopoly ended and it moved into highly competitive global businesses such as high-speed Internet and mobile phones.
The state remains the largest single shareholder, with a 27 per cent stake. Most of its workforce retained civil service status, making it almost impossible for the company to fire them.
But employees have complained that managers try to force them to leave, making their lives miserable by transferring them to offices far from home, demeaning them and changing their tasks.
The man who tried to stab himself last week later told reporters his supervisor had insulted him by saying a student intern could easily do his job.
In-house doctors and social workers said they were seeing evidence of intense stress, such as increasing rates of alcoholism, absenteeism, on-the-job accidents and sleep disorders.
‘People have lost their bearings’ in the transition from a public to a private company, said Dr Monique Fraysse-Guiglini, an in-house doctor at the France Telecom headquarters in Grenoble, in eastern France.
‘From one day to the next, they are told to switch jobs, for example, from technician to salesman, or transferred to a workplace hundreds of kilometres away,’ she said. ‘It is no surprise that in this atmosphere, the most fragile take desperate actions.’
Company officials said personal difficulties could underlie the suicides, and they are not necessarily work-related. They said the woman who jumped to her death last week, for example, had already come to the attention of supervisors and doctors, who considered her emotionally fragile.
Other French corporations have had to deal with clusters of suicides in the past few years, and many have restructured their operations.
EDF, the state electrical utility, set up support groups and dispatched senior managers to hear employee grievances after three workers at the same facility in Chinon, in central France, committed suicide in the space of six months in 2007.
sachs_susan@yahoo.com
INTENSE STRESS
‘From one day to the next, they are told to switch jobs, for example, from technician to salesman, or transferred to a workplace hundreds of kilometres away. It is no surprise that in this atmosphere, the most fragile take desperate actions.’
Dr Monique Fraysse-Guiglini, an in-house doctor at the France Telecom headquarters
Related posts:
